


Oh What  A Beautiful City

by MooseFeels



Series: Five for Fifteen Hundred [4]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alpha Dean, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Eating Disorders, Omega Castiel, Prince Castiel, Starvation, Suicide Attempt, mentions of rape/noncon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-01
Updated: 2014-06-07
Packaged: 2018-01-14 04:26:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 30
Words: 27,160
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1252810
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MooseFeels/pseuds/MooseFeels
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Castiel is an omega prince, who will let himself starve to death before he can be fetched by his betrothed. Things change a little when his betrothed comes for him a bit earlier than he expected.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

His uncle can lock him in his room, can forbid him company and journals and pens, can limit the books he’s allowed to read, but he cannot make him eat.

Castiel comes to the conclusion on a rainy day, one year before the man he has been sold to will come.

He knows with grim certainty that the only thing he can do is try to starve himself to death.

His omega body, he doesn’t have the hormones that would make his facial hair grow- no razors. His room doesn’t have the sturdy chandeliers of the other rooms- nothing to hang himself from. He’s only on the third floor of the palace- the fall would bruise him but not kill him.

So he stops eating.

It’s little changes at first. His fingernails become brittle and thin. His hair loses its shine. His skin pales, his gums pull away from his teeth.

He becomes so much more tired. Standing and walking his quarters exhausts him. Reaching for high books leaves him dizzy and faint. He will stand too quickly sometimes and wake up later on the floor.

There reads suspicion on the faces of the servants (spies), so he has a few bites of every meal and throws away the rest, into the toilet where they cannot find it. Drinks glass after glass after glass of cold, cold water and warm, warm tea to fill the void inside of him.

He stops missing writing when he is barely awake long enough to read every day. Stops missing running when he is barely strong enough to stand.

Castiel stops looking into the mirror by the end of the third month and stops experiencing a heat by the end of the fifth.

Omega bodies, they know. The know that heats are for rearing pups, and bodies that cannot support pups do not have heats. Distressed bodies. Overworked bodies. Starving bodies. He stops smelling the world in that extra way, the way that tells him if someone could mate him. It is like losing the sense entirely, like being blind for the first few days it is gone.

He hadn’t been expecting it, but it’s better this way. It means that even if it doesn’t work, if he doesn’t die by the time the buyer comes for him, he cannot have him. He cannot claim him and take him. Cannot own him down to his very soul. It buys him more time to waste away into a calm, quiet space where uncles cannot sell bitch-nephews to strengthen the authority of the crown.

By month eight, he only gets out of bed twice a day, to engage in the charade of eating his meals and greeting the servants. He eats his few bites under their watchful gaze, taking a long, long time. Inevitably, though, something calls them away and he can stagger, agonizingly, to the bathroom and remove the food.

Some days, he breaks and eats a whole bowl of porridge.

His clothes hang more and more loosely from his body, until he pushes a three new holes in his belt.

He is starving his way through the tenth month (his body slowly eating away at his arms and legs, leaving vivid bones where once was muscle, tough and strong) when his uncle comes in, unexpectedly, with a stranger.

Castiel is in bed, buried under his blankets (he is so cold, these days).

“Rise and meet your betrothed,” his uncle commands. “This is not becoming of you, Castiel. It is nearly three in the afternoon, why are you still asleep?”

So Castiel decides to show them both, his uncle and his owner.

He pushes the blankets away and stands, unsteadily, on his thin legs.

The man gasps, rushes forward to catch him as he falls.

“What did you do him?” he barks at his uncle.

Castiel can’t really see, his vision is so bright with stars, but he can hear the raw fury of his Uncle’s voice. “Nothing!” he barks. “I sent him food and all the books he asked for!”

Castiel feels a soft hand brush his hair from his face, strong arms place him back into his bed. His vision clears just long enough that he can see green eyes.

Green like the grass that used to be under his feet.

“My choice,” he says. Barely over a whisper with as much venom as he can contain.

There is a long, horrified pause. “You told me he was willing,” the voice says, like thunder.

“He was as willing as he had to be!” his uncle barks back. “He is my ward and a bitch. Do not forget your place in this matter, Winchester. Contracts have been signed. This is still advantageous for you. Fuck him once and let him starve himself. You’ll still have the new land holdings even if you don’t have the claim to the throne.”

There is a breaking sound as a hand sweeps his lamp from his nightstand.

“He is a human being!” the man shouts.

He falls back under his sleep again.

He has been hungry so long now that he barely notices anymore.

* * *

 

When Castiel wakes back up, he is in a different room. It is smaller than his bedroom, still comfortable, however. A smaller bed but still plush under his body. Fewer blankets but still soft. Great windows like eyes let moonlight into the room, and the rest is illuminated by a low fire.

He tries to sit up, to see more, but he is so weak.

“Oh,” someone says. “Oh, you’re awake. Please, let me help you.”

The same voice as before.

“Please,” Castiel says. “Please.”

The man helps him sit up, and Castiel still tries to flinch away from his touches.

It is the same voice and the same green eyes from before. The same strong hands and arms. He doesn’t know his name, though. He doesn’t know where he is.

“You need to drink this,” he says. “It’s broth. Not much, but too much right now, it might not do anything at all.”

“Please,” Castiel says. “Please don’t- please don’t-”

He can’t finish. To articulate the terror, the sheer fear, would give it an awful shape. A possibility.

The man’s face shifts to a certain sadness. He turns away from Castiel. “He sent me letters,” he murmurs. “They were signed in your name. I thought- I thought you were willing. I told him I would not have you otherwise. I stand by that.” He gestures about the room.. “You’re only here because...I thought if you thought starving yourself was your best option, you probably didn’t have many options to start.” He pauses for a moment. Says, “I’m Dean.”

Castiel looks at him for a long time. Looks at the bowl of broth in front of him. At the man in front of him. Feels in his body no new hurts, nothing suspicious.

“How long was I asleep?” he asks.

“Two days,” Dean answers. “The whole journey from your capital to a safe house, here in the valley. My home is another four days from here but I knew you would not make it that far. I’ve been feeding you chips of frozen juice while you slept. You really should eat, though. Please. As far as I’m concerned, the betrothal, all of it- it means nothing. Promise. Just want you to be well.”

Castiel looks at him for a long time. “I’m an omega,” he says. “And you’re an alpha.” As if maybe this Dean is slow and hasn’t figured it out. “It doesn’t matter what I want. I’m nothing.”

“Don’t say that,” Dean answers. “Don’t.” His voice is desperate. He looks pained. There is something tender in his gaze, in his voice. “I’ll help you figure it out. I have a whole legal system of judges and lawyers who can help you get what’s yours. You’re your father’s only heir which means the kingdom is yours whether you’re an omega or not. Your uncle is just a regent- I mean, a real son of a bitch, too, but just a regent. He’s trying to get rid of you and thought that I would be a good place because frankly I live in a fucking backwater and I’m not really strategically important but-”

Castiel laughs unexpectedly at his candor.

Dean freezes and blushes a little bit. “Sorry,” he says. “I’m not great at politics. Really. But I like to think I’m pretty good at being an okay person. And it doesn’t matter if you’re an omega or not, you need to be happy. You need what’s yours.”

Castiel looks at him and sees both a deep hurt and a terrible hope inside of Dean. He realizes, suddenly, that the letters his uncle sent Dean would have said whatever Dean wanted. He realizes that Dean loved this illusion of him. This lie of him.

He reaches out with shaking hands and takes the broth from Dean.

He takes a long, deep drink of it.

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

Dean wakes him up every four hours to take his temperature and feed him bowls of soup, of tea, of thin porridge with a little milk and a little honey. Other than that, he lets Castiel sleep.

Castiel sees the room through the daylight, the moonlight. It is a tall, high room. There are great windows facing out onto a lake, their thick glass panes casting uneven and wobbling pools of light over everything. The walls are made of thick, fragrant wood, well finished but unpolished. The floor is covered in a heavy brown bearskin. It smells like a den, all heavy woods and dark musks and whiskey.

Castiel would not know Dean was a prince to look at him. he does not wear fine clothes, rather he dresses simply. And he is so attentive. He guides Castiel to the bathroom, he feeds him, he makes sure he’s comfortable. More than once, Castiel has drifted out of a strange dream to hear Dean murmuring lowly to him, reading something.

They are there for three days before a tall man with long hair rides to the house on the lake.

“Dean,” he says, bursting in. “We haven’t heard from you in a week and the palace keeps sending back the falcons. How did it-”

He freezes and stares at Castiel.

“What did you-”

“It was my choice,” Castiel says, his voice rough and low from lack of use.

“Sam,” Dean says, standing. He places the bowl and spoon down, holding his hands forward in a placating gesture, “thank god you’re here. You’ve got to help me, I’m worried I’m going to-”

“You’ve been giving him milk, yes?” He asks almost immediately.

“Yeah,” Dean answers. “I haven’t been sure what more to do, though, I don’t want to make him sick like those people you told me about.” Dean turns to Castiel and says, “This is my brother, Sam. He’s trained with doctors. Lots of them. If anyone can get you back on your feet, it’s probably...well, it’s probably someone he’s trained with but I’m sure he could give it a fair crack.”

Sam studies Castiel almost incredulously. He towers over Dean, very tall and built like a horse. He wears riding clothes, dusty from the road. He has a young face, held seriously, and bright eyes.  He looks confused. Vaguely irritated.

“Where did he find you?” He murmurs, stepping forward and laying his own hand over Castiel’s forehead. He moves brusquely, surely. He moves like a battlefield doctor, every motion practiced and calculated.

“Sam, this isn’t another-”

“Another what, Dean?” Sam asks. “Another one of your strays? Like Charlie or Kevin or-”

“In the palace,” Castiel interrupts, as forcefully as he can manage. “He found me in the palace.”

Sam, the doctor, the younger prince, the brother of the man who for all intents and purposes owns Castiel, freezes and looks up at him.

“I would recommend in the future you not be quite so rude to your patients in the event that they too are princes of the largest and most powerful nation on the continent,” he continues.

Sam stops touching Castiel. Massages his brow with his hand. Mutters, “Shit,” under his breath.

Dean has to step out for a moment, he is laughing so hard.

“I’m sorry,” Sam says. “Dean likes to...Dean tends to collect people in need. And I thought you were-”

“Starving was the only way I could make sure I could die before the marriage,” Castiel says. “What I did was my choice.”

Sam sits at the bedside for a long moment. Quiet. “You sent letters,” he says.

“My Uncle did,” Castiel replies.

Sam nods again. “Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, okay. Okay. Has Dean told you about the ride to the Kingdom?”

“He said it was four days,” he answers.

“Four days over mountains and rivers,” Sam says. “Your kingdom, it occupies damn near the only flat land on the continent. If you stay here a while longer, it probably won’t be the standard you’re accustomed to. If you go, though, you might not make it.” He pauses, looks Castiel dead in the eye. “I need to examine you more thoroughly. I understand if you don’t want this but-”

Castiel pulls the blankets away and pulls the nightshirt off of himself.

Sam nods. Spends the next several minutes taking his heart rate, pressing against his ribs, head laid against his chest to carefully hear his breath.

He finishes and carefully helps Castiel back into his nightshirt.

“Understand,” he says, “that I’m not here to lie to you or Dean.” He pauses. “There is a very real possibility that you might not make it here either.”

Castiel nods. “Well, yes,” he replies. “That was the initial goal.”

Sam huffs a short laugh. Bitter. “The lake house is on friendly property but is a two hour ride from the nearest town or house,” he says. “Dean can hunt and fish but for at least these first two weeks you need to eat simple food. Porridge, broth, milk. You run into villages where people have been starved for weeks and you try to give them a decent meal and their body stops working permanently.”

Castiel nods, weakly. “I understand,” he says.

Sam looks from Castiel to Dean coming back inside, red in the face. “You’ve not been here long?” he asks, to neither of them. To both of them.

“Four days,” Dean replies.

Sam nods. “I’ll ride into town for some supplies for you. He’s probably going to be nauseous later and he’ll- he can’t go into heat until his body is stronger.”

Dean blushes bright pink. Coughs nervously.

“How long has it been?” Sam asks.

Castiel thinks backwards, through the months. “September,” he replies.

“Oh, Christ,” Sam says. He stands, readjusts his cloak. “Help him get some clothes on,” he says. “I’ll be back by the evening.”

As suddenly as he came in, he’s gone.


	3. Chapter 3

Dean helps him gingerly into his clothing. His hands are gently, his motions are slow. He announces every movement, every shift they’re making as he slides Castiel into a pair of pants and a shirt. Even helps him comb the mess of tangles out of his hair. By the end, Castiel feels faint and strained for air.

“I think that’s enough exercise for today, yeah?” he says. He guides him gently to a huge armchair in front of the fire.

It is early spring now, with the grass just beginning to green again and buds appearing over the trees, but the air is still cool and the wind blows against the windows, rattling the thin panes of glass. The fire roars warm and bright, and the feeling of its heat makes Castiel’s joints and body relax slightly. He sighs into the feeling as Dean drapes a soft blanket over his lap.

“Do you think you could eat some more porridge?” he asks. “Not much, but a little?”

Castiel nods, biting his lip.

Dean brings him a bowl.

Castiel knows its small, but after so much time not eating anything at all, the few spoonfuls look daunting to say the very least. He looks at it for a long, long moment and move the spoon with a shaking hand to his mouth. Eats a little, a tiny amount, and then places the bowl on the small table beside the chair.

Dean nods and takes the bowl away, to a different room of what must be a summer palace or a lake retreat or something. Castiel has never heard of Dean or Sam Winchester- he knows actually very little of the affairs of his nation, given that his uncle was careful to remove him from politics after he presented as an omega.

Omegas don’t wear crowns. They were demure tiaras. They hold hands and walk half a step behind. They smile, emptily, in royal portraits flanked by healthy, pink little children. They were white suits and dresses and fine silver necklaces that, while elegant and demure, still hold that indivisible association with a collar.

Castiel doesn’t realize he’s rubbing his neck when Dean comes back in and says, “Are you alright? Can I get anything for you?”

He startles from his thoughts. “No,” he replies. “No, I’m sorry. I’m just- I have spent the last two years...alone. The last year almost completely without...anyone. I am not terribly good company any more for my time in solitude, you must forgive me.” He resists the urge to yawn, a heaviness coming over him. He’s done nothing but sleep since he got here and yet he is still so tired.

Dean nods. “I understand,” he answers. He gestures to the wall near the door leading to the other parts of the house. “There are books,” he says, “if you would like to read. And empty journals, should you like to write.” He looks a little uncomfortable. Nervous. “I am afraid I must tend to the horse for a little-”

“Of course,” Castiel answers. “I should be fine on my own just a while. I think I should like to sit, maybe. Watch the trees.” He looks out of the window. “My quarters did not have big windows like these, or ones that opened. It is so nice to see the green again, even if it is so tender and new.”

Dean nods. He pulls from his pocket two things- a bell, heavy and secure in Castiel’s hand, and a knife. “If you need me, that window,” and he points, “is opposite the stables. And if you are in danger,” and this he says with the most stern face Castiel has yet seen on him as he lays the flat of the knife in Castiel’s palm, “this-” he breaks off. Nods. He backs up and bows, awkwardly. Formally.

It is all very strange, the way Dean goes reeling from familiar to formal.

Castiel pulls the blanket a little closer to himself and inhales deeply. There is bound up inside of the fiber the smell of wood and smoke. A smell of sweat and come (surely the two princes have stayed here in ruts) and something else. Something elemental and musky, something like deep oak and spices and riding in the woods. Something like sawn branches. Something like bodies.

Castiel pulls the scent of that closer to himself. Sleeps until Sam comes back from town. 


	4. Chapter 4

His bones pull from his body dangerously, even though Dean knows he isn’t supposed to look.

He’d started receiving the letters two years ago. They’d been curt and brief at first. To the point. Non-confessional, formal. Not quite unfriendly but guarded. But they’d come. They’d come every week, written in fine cursive hand on white paper that smelled of omega quarters. Soft and floral. Dean had gotten about a dozen of them before he’d started writing back- before he was well enough to write back.

Two years, and it had all been a lie.

His confessions. His comforts. The gentle things written to guide him through the worst nights. None of it had been real.

The I love yous. The proposal.

It stung, to say the least. Felt like the deepest cutting betrayal of his life, that the only real thing about the letters, about their romance, was that smell. That smell that he had held close and let nurse him through the sleepless nights. The long recovery. The piecing together after his capture.

Castiel hadn’t saved him, a lie had.

Dean stands in the second bedroom in the lake house, in front of his own fireplace and clutches the letters. The paper is browning in some places and tear-stained in others. Faded ink. Dean clutches them, like he’s clutched them for so long now. Like a lantern in the dark, Dean holds these letters. He takes a deep breath and tosses them into the fire.

He brushes the dirt from his hands as he steps back into the largest bedroom, where he has put Castiel.

The Winchester line, they’re minor royalty. A small, landlocked kingdom at the edge of nowhere, only good for hunting grounds and producing strong, hard mercenaries. Winchester armies are the best to be hired, especially the units Dean has personally trained. They don’t have much arable land, though, and the winters are brutal out there. The lake house, in a neighboring country led by a family that has been friendly to them for centuries is as close as they get to a palace. Dean’s ancestral home is a stone castle with high walls and roaring hearths and strong defenses, both against enemies abroad and the things that stalk the woods that surround every settlement on all sides.

Castiel’s line, though, they’re- they’re important. They hold the largest kingdom on the continent, they have the most resources, the largest mines, the biggest fields, the largest ports. They have sprawling palaces for each season and castles defending every major city. They have riches, they have power.

Castiel’s quarters, a prison though they may have been, had more gold inside of them then Dean had ever seen in his life.

Dean doesn’t look like Castiel, not really. Dean is made of marching, fighting muscle. Dean looks like a man who lives in the saddle, by his sword. His skin is freckled and tanned from the sun and his face sets naturally to a serious expression, a thinking expression. Dean is hard from wars. Castiel is so delicate, though. The curve of his bones and features, he looks like he is made of porcelain. His pale skin, he looks like a flower petal. His bitten, chapped lips- he almost glows. Or at least, he did in the portraits Dean was sent.

Castiel as this real, breathing person sleeping in front of the fire, looks delicate because he just might fall apart at any moment. His bones pushing against his skin, pale from being imprisoned, exaggerate his features. His hair is dark but lank and dull. His lips are pale from exhaustion, from being so close to death.

And Dean just can’t get the smell of him out of his head.

There is something linked, inextricably, between this smell of Castiel and this light at the end of the tunnel, this small voice telling him to untie the noose. This idea of hope and home. Of being saved.

Dean kneels down at the edge of the fire and looks up at Castiel beside him. Suppresses a whimper at the back of his throat. Lays his head on Castiel’s knee, if only for a moment.

This can’t be about Dean. This can’t be about who he thought Castiel was, that lie he fell in love with. Castiel has to live, has to put his muscle and fat back onto his body, has to be strong enough to be a king one day.

And if that means that Dean pines for him from afar, if Dean never marries, if Sam’s children inherit the crown, then so be it.

Dean fears he will never love anyone as much as he loved that lie. Dean fears he will never find such comfort, such hope in another’s scent.

Dean bows his head where he kneels in front of Castiel. Swears a silent oath. If not his lover, his protector. If not his husband, his bodyguard. If not his equal, his knight. If not his alpha, a member of his pack.

Castiel sleeps on, unaware. Healing.


	5. Chapter 5

“This is a tea,” Sam says. “It will delay your heat. It’s a bit of a mixed situation, though. The longer you go without it, the harder it will come. You have to delay it though, because if you go through heat right now, there’s not enough fat in your system to pad out the fever and the water loss.”

Castiel nods gravely. “Of course,” he murmurs.

Sam woke him up as soon as he came back. It’s dark outside, the sun long since gone. If Castiel were stronger, he would step outside to look at the stars.

“As you recover, you’re going to pick up on scents again,” Sam adds. “Dean is trying to wash the bedclothes and the clothes as often as he can, so be patient with him. The alpha smell here will probably be a little overwhelming when your full scenting comes back, no matter what.”

“Are you an alpha as well?” Castiel asks.

Sam nods. “Yeah,” he answers. “We weren’t sure if I was going to rut or not for a long time, though. Second sons are always much more likely to be omegas. Dad was hoping I would go for the military like Dean, but it was better I went to university in the long run. Hard to find doctors you can trust.”

Castiel looks away. He would have gone to university, too, if he had been an alpha like he was supposed to.

So many things could have been different.

“I’ll be staying here for the next few days,” he says. “I hope that does not make you uncomfortable.”

“No,” Castiel answers, more out of reflex than anything. He is nervous here. Uncomfortable. Dean is a stranger, a stranger that pulled him away from his uncle and his attempts to sell him off, but a stranger nonetheless. Is it better to be in this house with two strangers, or just one?

Castiel holds the knife that Dean gave him under the blankets. More of a comfort to himself than a threat to Sam, who is tall and rude and presumptuous and kind.

“You need to make sure you’re exercising as you heal,” Sam continues.

“I know,” Castiel interrupts. “No heats yet, exercise, simple foods- I’m not a child.” He sighs, exasperating. “I’m not- I can take care of myself. I’ve been taking care of myself for years.”

Sam opens his mouth, begins to say something, and stops. Nods, acquiescing. “I think Dean has cooked something for you,” he says. “I’ll let you rest.”

He stands up and leaves, leaving Castiel alone in the room.

Castiel sighs again and looks up at the carved wooden ceiling. He grips the arms of the  chair tightly and stands, wobbling.

He lays his cool hands on the wood of the mantle, heat radiating upward. He pulls forward, letting his arms and shoulders stretch. They pop and he sighs once more, comfortable with it.

The door opens and Dean comes in. “Good to see you up,” he says. “Even if it for just a moment.” He smiles at Castiel, his hands full. “This is some weird rice porridge Sam picked up at university. He likes it enough and I’ve had worse. It’ll stick to your bones mighty well. Help you look like you’re not going to drift off all of a sudden.”

Castiel smiles at him. Walks shakily back to the chair and eases back down.

Dean carefully places a small bowl of the porridge in his hands and sits down on the floor next to the fire with his own. He stirs it, back and forth a few times, before taking an enormous bite.

Castiel smiles at him slightly before stirring his own and taking a much, much smaller bite.

It is warm. It is very salty. It is very heavy.

He has a few more bites before he feels so heavy he might sink through the chair and onto the floor.

Dean looks up at him. Takes the bowl and says, “You did well. Are you tired or would you like to read?”  
“Want to see the stars,” Castiel yawns, expansively.

Dean looks at him for a long minute. Looks outside. Says, “Do you trust me?”

“Do I have a choice?” Castiel asks.

Dean looks at him with this incredible expression on his face, like somehow Castiel has broken his heart. Like somehow Dean has let him down and all he wants to do is make amends. Looks at Castiel and says, “Yes.”

He nods. He licks his lips. “Okay,” he says. “I trust you.”

Dean places the bowls down and bends and very carefully picks Castiel up.

Dean’s arms are strong underneath him. Supporting his weight carefully, he walks to the door.

“Please,” he requests. “My hands are sort of full.”

Castiel huffs a small laugh and turns the knob.

The air is cold on his skin, but it’s not bad cold. It’s fresh and clean. Not the cold of unlit fires, the cold of nature and wind all around him.

He looks up and gasps.

“One moment,” Dean mutters, and he sets him gently in the dewy grass, unshorn and soft underneath him. He dashes inside and brings out a few blankets. One is laid on the ground for them to sit on, another is wrapped over Castiel’s shoulders.

“Hello there,” Castiel whispers to the stars.

The moon is low in its cycle, barely a sliver in the sky. The light around them, that is the faraway stars surrounding them, reflected in the mirror of the lake.

“If I had been allowed to go to university, I would have been an astronomer,” Castiel whispers. “I was always meant to disappoint Zachariah, I just didn’t figure it would be- it would be this.”

It is hard not to hate what his body has done to him. Hard not to hate the prison that his body has made as himself.

“I never knew much about them myself,” Dean says. “I mean, I know the story, about the holes in the sky and light of the universe pokes through but I was never a sailor so I never needed it for navigation and after a day in the fields you’re not much for gazing at anything that isn’t the inside of your own eyelids.” He pauses. Says softly, “Tell me about them?”

Castiel points to one, high above. “See that one? That’s the North Star,” he says. “That one’s constant, all the year and all the hours. No matter where you are, there it is.”  He points to another clustering of lights in the sky. “And these constellations, that’s Orion, the hunter, and Lepus the hare underneath.”

Castiel talks about the stars and what they mean, how to navigate by them, their stories, their names deep into the night, until he falls asleep at some point.

He wakes up back in the bed, blankets wrapped tight over him and Dean’s coat over top of him. 


	6. Chapter 6

They develop something like a routine. Dean wakes Castiel up every morning with a bowl of porridge and some days a little bit of fish. They talk a little bit and then Dean leaves Castiel to dress himself. Afterwards, they go for a short walk.

There’s a rough path of dirt that lays flat along the edge of the lake. They go a little further each day, that first day just barely making to the path before Castiel was so winded Dean had to carry him back, but now, nearly a week later, Castiel can make it about half a mile before he feels shaky and tired. Then they wander back towards the house, with Dean some days just a strong arm to lean against and other days him carrying him all the way. They have maybe some fish and some milk, maybe a small quantity of fruit. And then Dean leaves Castiel to read until dinner.

“We don’t have a lot of books,” Dean says, blushing a little. “I mean, hell, you’ve probably read all of them before, but I know you can’t listen to me ramble on all day and I have the horses to care for and it’s probably wise I keep sharp with my sword and-”  
“Thank you, Dean,” Castiel murmurs, smiling up at the tall bookcase. “It’s wonderful.”

Dean blushes ever so slightly, looks at his feet. “I’ll uh, I’ll be out, if you need me. And Sam should be upstairs. The bell should let us know if anything’s wrong.”

So Castiel has spent the last week reading the diaries of the dead kings of Dean’s country, old legends from the mountains and hills, medical texts from far and away- anything. Everything.

He’s been there a week when he finds it.

It’s a small book. Bound in green leather that is worn and fragile. Old paper that is yellowing, with faded pen script. It has a different smell than the other books- less like sheer paper and more personal. Sweat is embedded into it.

Two initials on the first page- _DW._

Castiel drops it like it’s made of hot coals at first, and then he picks it up gingerly. Looks around the room cautiously.

Opens it.

Castiel takes a deep breath.

Reads. 

 


	7. Chapter 7

_August 15_

_I am told that the pregnancy is developing well and that there will be an heir by January. John will be pleased. Lisa’s line is powerful and if we have an alpha son, then there will be unity and peace. She’s happy by the sea and I’m happy to leave her there._

_I hope that I love the pup. ~~I don’t love~~ I don’t think I love her._

_The lake is pleasant this time of year. Very green. The water is nice. I don’t even pretend I am canoeing at this point, I just swim. It doesn’t make me feel less empty, but it does make it so I don’t mind so much._

_August 20_

_I went for a walk yesterday, from the house as far out as I could go by the high point of noon. I turned around and came back the same way I had cleared. It is so quiet here. It’s just me. Sam is at school and Dad is in the capital. I didn’t take any servants or retainers with me when I left- it’s just like when Sam and I were growing up. I caught three fish yesterday with a spear I made and fried them in too much butter. It was fantastic. I’ll come up here for berrying season and learn to make pies. Maybe I’ll just stay here until it rolls around again. It’s not like they need me in the capital. John trains the troops. Sam is the smart one. I’m just the placeholder. The heir._

_If I could just give the crown to Sam I would. He’d be better for it._

_August 22_

_I am told there are fires at the edge of our territories, in the hills. Raiders. John has told me not to worry, that all is in hand. He doesn’t want me riding out with the troops. He doesn’t want me to die out there._

_Sam’s never gotten along with Dad and I can’t blame him. I think Dad is realizing that with me gone, he’d be left alone._

_August 27_

_Not raiders. Armies. Moving further inland. I have already sharpened my sword and oiled my saddle. I will ride out tomorrow at dawn and meet with my retainers in the capital._

_Looks like I’m going to die on the battlefield after all._

* * *

 

Castiel holds the journal tightly.

The pages- hundreds of them are all blank after that.

He looks at it for a long, long time.

Hides it under his bed.


	8. Chapter 8

Dean likes to give Castiel space.

Actually, he hates it. That primal, alpha thing inside of him wants to be next to Castiel all the time, making sure he’s healthy and safe and grounded and real. He wants to nuzzle up against his neck and smell him. Wants to hold him until he puts weight back on his body and then he wants to-

Dean shakes his head and picks the piece of wood he’s training into a bow back up. Ash grows through these woods, and while Dean is by no stretch a great craftsman, he enjoys the process of making. He enjoys stripping the bark and carving. he likes oiling and bending and training. He likes looping the bowstring end to end. He likes shooting the rough, wooden arrows he’s made at the trees. It keeps his aim sharp, even if he’s not a great maker, a great builder. And it gets him out of the house for a little while so Castiel can read or nap before dinner. Soon Sam will head back to the city, to the university where he studies, but for now Dean can give Castiel the space he needs to heal and Dean can try to stop feeling this terrible, impossible thing he feels reflexively for him.

He’s been working for about two or three hours when he starts walking back to the house, the sun beginning to set behind him.

 

Sam comes down the stairs to Castiel’s room, where Castiel stands in front of the windows and looks out at the water.

He’s recovering by leaps and bounds, really. He’s put on a barely any weight at all but he doesn’t spend all his time sleeping any more. He talks a little, in a low, raspy voice. He’s strong enough to bathe himself, to climb out of the bed on his own. He’s still scary thin, though. Sam’s glad summer is coming. If it were winter, he’d surely freeze.

“How do you feel?” Sam asks.

“Your brother,” Castiel says instead of answering, “Where did he go? What happened?”  
“Pardon?” Sam replies, frowning.

“About four years ago,” Castiel says. “There was trouble at your borders. What happened?”

Castiel is sharp, all the time. He speaks like someone who expects answers, who is used to getting them. Royal.

Sam pauses. Swallows. “A secondary line to the family,” he murmurs. “They tried to take the crown. Dean went out with his retainers- with his army, you understand- to defend the kingdom. The line was squashed. There’s still grumbling, out in the edges but for the most part, there’s...there’s peace.”

Castiel frowns, his features starvation sharp and thin on his face. “What happened?” He asks again.

His meaning is very clear

What happened to Dean?

Sam looks at him for a moment, at the way Castiel wavers in space, at the way the clothes that fit Dean when he was a teenager hang off of Castiel’s shoulders aggressively. Castiel looks fragile the way the burnt out steel of a burned sword looks fragile. Jagged. Sharp. Furious.

Sam looks to the bookcase, briefly.

The journal that Dean used before he left, that singular link Sam had while he was captured, is off the shelf.

“Hey, so we’re out of fish and I could go and try to go fishing but-”

Dean blusters into the room, interrupting the moment. He looks at the two of them for a long second and pauses. Says, “Is everything all right?”

“Yeah,” Sam says sharply. He turns, and leaves.

It’s not his to say.

 

There is something burning between Sam and Castiel when Dean walks into the room, and the fire goes out as soon as Sam leaves.

It’s like someone cut all of the strings in Castiel’s body, and he collapses, loosely, against the window he was leaning on.

“Whoah,” Dean says, rushing forward to catch him. “Whoah there. We went pretty far around the lake today, huh? Maybe you should be taking it easy.”

“Dean,” Castiel says, a little breathlessly, and shit, does that make Dean’s heart skip a beat. “I’m sorry, I thought I was feeling so much better but then I went and got angry and now I’ve made such a mess.”

“It’s okay,” Dean says, picking him up gently to lead him back to the bed, where he can spread out and lie down. “You’re still recovering. You’re doing so much better.”

Castiel’s  fingers wind tight into his shirt, turn white from the clutching. His eyes look into Dean’s almost panicked. Anxious. There’s something to him that’s falling apart, Dean suddenly sees. “Dean, what happened?” Castiel almost whispers. “ What happened to you? In the war, what happened?”

Dean doesn’t say anything for a long time, suddenly terrified. Struck by how quickly this has happened.

“Please,” he says. “Please.”

“I was captured,” Dean says, looking at the sheets. “I spent two years in capture before the camp was found and...burnt down.” There is fine stitching that rambles along the edge of them. White thread. Well made. Soft. “It was three months before I believed it wasn’t a trick and another year before I- before I-” He pauses. Swallows. He gets up. “I’ll grab you your porridge. Breakfast for dinner shouldn’t hurt you.”

He leaves that room, that space. Stands in the small kitchen and holds onto the edge of the table for a long time.

Tries to remember how to breathe. 


	9. Chapter 9

Castiel lays in the bed for a long while. Maybe an hour. Maybe less.

He sits up and swings his legs over the edge of the bed, his muscles groaning. Telling him to stop. He holds onto the wall for balance for a solid minute and then he lurches from the bedside to the windows, where he grabs an umbrella.

It’s a serviceable cane. His walking stick is outside. That’s not where he’s headed, though.

He realizes as he lurches down the hallway that he’s never been deeper into the house. He’s been outside, all over the grounds and around the lake. He’s been in the barn, briefly, to see the strong black horse that carried him and Dean from the palace. He’s seen a library not too far away from his room. He’s never ventured to Dean’s room or Sam’s room or to the kitchen.

He moves slowly. He pants.

He’s so tired all the time, even after all of the rest and the eating.

Castiel opens the door to the kitchen and it all comes back to him, at once.

There is a smell of apples on the air- not fresh. Stewed and cooked to butter for the long winter and the fresh spring. Bitter greens. Oil and fat. A smell of old fish heads and guts rotting. Pepper. Woodsmoke. Green leaves and grass. Lake air and moss and water.

Smell. Smell has come back to the world.

He leans against the door, suddenly exhilarated but unable to get enough air. It is like discovering a color that had been missing. Like finding something long lost.

There is an undercurrent under all of that. Sweat. Musk. Murky and thick, heavy like the mud on the bottom of the riverbed. Smell of male, smell of alpha male. Two of them.

Castiel gasps for air, suddenly feeling something else that disappeared long ago.

Dean’s head darts up from a wooden table suddenly. “Castiel?” He asks, his voice wet.

Tears. The air smells like that, too.

“Smell,” Castiel gasps. “Smell. Everything. All of it. You.”

Dean immediately looks very concerned. His face grows grave. His brow furrows. “You okay?” He asks. “You don’t think-”

“Not heat,” Castiel replies. “Just- it’s all back.” He touches his face and suddenly realizes that the smell, the tears, that’s him. “It’s all back. I thought it was gone. It’s all back.”

He leans against the door and slides down the floor. Crying.

His body is coming back to him, which means his heat is coming too.

He’s healing, which means he’s vulnerable.

It’s delayed but it’s coming. He’s drinking the tea but it’s coming.

He’s going to have a heat.

He cries. He cries for his sudden gain. He cries for his sudden loss.

He’ll always be a prisoner.


	10. Chapter 10

Castiel cries in the kitchen until he becomes so tired he falls back into sleep.

It’s a blessing, really. It means Dean can scoop him up in his arms and carry him back to his bed. Pull the drapes shut against the brilliant setting sun.

His tears dry on his skin, leaving behind salty trails. Dean tries to smooth them away without waking Castiel, who feels much lighter and more fragile than he has before. He pulls the blankets over Castiel’s body and something slips from under them. A leatherbound journal.

Dean holds it for a long moment and opens it. Reads the first page and puts it down.

It make sense that Castiel would have found it. He reads constantly, voraciously, and it’s not surprising that he ran across it in his devouring of every book on the case.  It’s not like Dean forbade it or even hid the thing. It wasn’t like it wasn’t something he didn’t want him to know, it just happened. It’s just painful and it happened.

He smooths Castiel’s hair away from his face and steps away, upstairs to Sam’s room.

“He found my old journal,” Dean says from the doorway.

Sam is at his desk, writing something. He looks up at Dean.

Sam grew older, grew up while Dean was in capture. He changed. He grew broad and muscular. Tough. Hard. There’s still a softness to his face though. A way of looking at Dean and looking at the world that shows all of the small, terrible ways it breaks his heart.

:He found it in his bookcase,” Sam answers. “ I’d forgotten I’d put it in there while I’d been- while we’d been searching.” He twists a little in space. “Your room...it smelled like you and it made me feel safe. Connected to you. We were so scared. I was so scared.”

Dean knows how close they’d come to leaving him for dead.

“I didn’t tell him anything he didn’t already know,” he continues. “There was war. You went to fight. That’s it.”

Dean nods a few times. “He came downstairs,” he says. “His smell came back suddenly. It overwhelmed him and he passed out. I’ve put him in his bed. You may want to check on him when he wakes.”

Sam pales, ever so slightly. “That’s not good,” he says.

“I know,” Dean answers.

Sam runs his hands through his hair. “That’s not good at all.”

 

When Castiel wakes up, Sam is in the room but Dean is nowhere in sight.

Sam’s smell is different. There is still that weird pungency of alpha but there is much less the smell of sweat and swimming and more the smell of woodsmoke and oil. It is not overwhelming as it was yesterday, but it is still...still distressing. Still upsetting.

“Where is Dean?” he asks.

“Making you breakfast,” Sam answers. “May I?” He gestures to Castiel.

Castiel sits up in the bed. Pulls his shirt off and moves to the edge. Sam sits beside him and lays a cool hand across his back, finding his heart. He holds it there for a long moment, counting the beat.

“I don’t think your heat is coming,” he says, and Castiel feels a great and total relief.  “The tea is working. You’re not running a fever and your heartbeat is steady. You’re just eating and the recovering is bringing back some of the things your body shut down while in crisis. Your um...your sexual appetite might come back in the next few days or so, too, but you shouldn’t experience anything like a heat for a while.”

Castiel nods. Says, “When should I have a heat?”

“I’ve been working on that,” Sam answers. “Thing is, all physicians agree that a heat is traumatic but none of them seem to document when it’s ideal to have one, especially for someone recovering like you are. You need to gain some weight and you need to rest. You’ve come a ways in the past few weeks but the thing is-”

“It could be months,” Castiel interrupts. “I know.”

Sam looks at Castiel for a moment and says, “It doesn’t make you weak.”

Castiel looks up at Sam for a moment. There’s a sadness written on Sam’s face.  A kindness Castiel cannot quite understand or discern.

“Your heat,” Sam says. “Your body. It doesn’t make you weak.”

Castiel looks away from him. Pulls his shirt over his body, the shirt that settles too large over his shoulders and collarbones and ribs and spine.

“Please leave,” Castiel says. “Please. I would like to be alone.”

Sam stands.

He bows before him and leaves the room.

Castiel stays sitting on the bed because he knows there’s a razor in that bathroom. That there’s a tall tree outside. That there’s a deep and cold lake just beyond the windows. Castiel sits on the bed and smells the grounding scent of the wood and the bedding and the paper and fire.

Sam is a kind man. Dean is too. They do not deserve Castiel’s moodswings and anger. He hates that he brings that kind of conflict here. This kind of tension.

“I made you breakfast,” Dean says, coming into the room. “Do you want to come to the kitchen to eat it?”

Castiel looks at him, in the doorway. He looks at his own hands.

“Yes,” he says. “Yes, I think I should.”

 

Castiel moves slowly, but Dean is more than happy to help him through the house to the kitchen.

He makes a mental note to find a stick for him to use as a cane or walking stick while he’s out in the woods today. Means he won’t have to lean on Dean every time he has an exhausting day or wants to heat out.

He sits down at the table, which Dean has laid with strips of bacon and toast with jam. Porridge in the corner and fish Dean smoked outside a ways out nearby. His stomach growls and he smiles a little bit, looking at Dean.

“Excuse me,” he murmurs, blushing slightly.

“Please,” Dean says. “Dig in.”

Castiel reaches forward and grabs a piece of toast with jam. Holds it tentatively and takes a bite.

Dean pours him a tall glass of milk and sits down across from him at the table. Has a piece of thick bacon and chews on it happily.

“Are you comfortable here?” Dean asks. “I know that you’re getting better and still recovering but Sam has to ride for the capital soon and it makes sense to head out with him. If something goes wrong on the road, he can take care of you and there would be more for you to do in the city.”

Castiel chews contemplatively. Wipes his mouth demurely with a napkin- so damn mannerly. “Would that be for the best?” He asks. “I’m happy here. It’s quiet.”

Dean licks his lips. “I don’t know if I’m able to care for you as best out here in the country,” he says. “I’m worried something might go wrong and I wouldn’t be able to do anything. I don’t want you to get hurt and the nearest help being two or four hours away.”

He nods. Takes a sip of his milk and thinks for a moment. “How long is it again?”

“Four days,” Dean answers. “It’s not easy riding but we’d be stopping in mountain towns to stay in inns.”

Castiel looks at Dean again. Blue eyes like lightning, like forget-me-nots, like fire. The letters never quite had the same breathless energy of Castiel inside of them. The little ways he is angry and sharp and cutting. The ways he is brilliant and terrifying. The ways he is steel.

Dean likes this part of Castiel a lot more than he liked the letters.

“Okay,” he says. “Bring me home, betrothed.”

Dean panics momentarily. Terrified. His heart speeds and his face flushes. “No no no,” he says. “No, you don’t understand, this isn’t- I’m not going to parade you. You aren’t a conquest.” Dean closes his eyes, trying to gather the right words. “I can also take you back to your uncle if you like or...or anything. I just want you to be safe.” He opens his eyes and looks up at the rafters. “I’ve come...come to think of you as a friend.”

It’s not the whole truth. It’s nothing even like the truth. It is a mirror of a certain kind of truth- if it were a color, it is a shade.

Castiel looks down at the table. His sharp cheekbones, still skeletal from his self-starvation, stand out clear and huge from his face.

“I trust you,” he says. His voice is quiet. “I trust you, and I’m scared.”

Dean nods again. Leans low over the table to try to see his eyes again.

“I won’t marry you if you don’t want it,” he assures.

I will want you for the rest of my natural life, he thinks.

“I want what’s best for you,” he continues.

I want you here by me, he thinks.

“Where do you want to go?” he asks.

“Anywhere but back there,” Castiel answers, automatically. He looks up again. Straightens himself. “Take me to your kingdom,” he says, decisively.

That night, as Dean packs, he tries not to think about it. To read into it.

This means nothing. This isn’t romantic. This isn’t romantic.

He’s just going to be safe.

He’s just going to be far from his uncle.

Dean’s not that kind of alpha. Dean’s not that kind of man.

Castiel is not that kind of man.


	11. Chapter 11

The horse is tall and black. A warhorse. A destrier. It is broad and tall. Well known withe dark, dark hair and eyes. It is not the lithe, leaping animal that Castiel rode for his leisure when he was allowed such things.

Still, it feel good to be on a horse for the first time in a few years. Feels powerful and strong.

Sam rides ahead of them on a white horse and Dean walks alongside. The horse carries a few bags- clothes for Dean and Castiel. Money. Maps. Food for the road. Not much, though, really. It is the first time Castiel has owned so little.

“Do you want to ride?” Castiel asks, from high up.

Dean looks at him. Shakes his head. “Nah,” he says. “I like to walk. And it’s good to have someone who can keep a feel for the path. We’re going to be heading into mountain country soon anyway and ‘Pala will need all her strength to take both of us.”

“I thought Sam was scouting,” Castiel answers.

“I’m fine,” Dean replies, a little too quickly. “Really.”

Dean looks at home in these woods, with color flushed against his cheeks and freckles dawning over him. Sunlight shooting gold into his hair. Castiel can’t help but notice it, the little ways Dean is very, very beautiful. His strong arms and broad chest. His hands that are gentle but competent.

He occasionally will point out trees and vine, flowers and earth. Little things in the forest and tell Castiel about them. He’s quite knowledgeable about the things of the woods and the earth, particularly for being so far from his home.

“I spent a lot of time here when I was younger,” he says. “After mom died, this was kind of our sanctuary, Sam and me. The safest place in the world.”

“I didn’t know your mother had passed,” Castiel says. “I don’t think I know much of anything about you.”

“Our lands are pretty small,” Dean shrugs. “It’s not like we’d be important or anything.”  
“He stopped letting me go to policy council,” Castiel says. “I don’t even- I haven’t seen a map in four years. What do the borders look like?”  
Dean flinches a little bit. Runs his hand through his hair. “Well,” he says, “there are...borders. And some of them run to...coasts.”

“Please,” Castiel says, rolling his eyes. “If you don’t stop you’re pull something and break it.”

Dean laughs, bright and hearty.

They meander their way along to the higher mountains and hills.

* * *

 

Dean doesn’t need to believe in Hell. He’s been there.

Hell is one week without food, sucking rainwater from clothes that haven't been washed in months, flinching away from every sound because one of them, and soon, is going to be a hot iron or thumbscrews or even just a knife, just a very sharp knife to be laid into flesh.

Yeah, Dean’s been to Hell.

This, though, this is could be a close second.

Castiel sits high and tight in the saddle, his hands grasping the horn. His body is strung tight, all muscles as the horse moves quickly through the forest, over hills, quickly approaching the stop for the night.

His body is so close.

His smell, the smell of him, has begun to change, both with gaining weight and with his more...more biological recovery.

Takes a lot of control not to reach out and touch him.

He’s been surprisingly talkative today. He asks questions, about the trees and the grasses and the animals. Asks about stories and politics. It’s probably the most Dean has talked to Castiel since he’s met him. It’s nice to hear his rough voice, his laughter, his breath.

Nice to get to know him.

They ride on. 


	12. Chapter 12

The inn is small but warm, only a few rooms in its heavy wooden walls. It is nestled just in the space between two hills, right as they become mountains. it is surrounded by deep woods, with red bark and deep green foliage. Golden light pours out of its windows as the sun sets, leaving purple dusk and dark night behind.

Dean wraps Castiel in his cloak before they head inside.

There are not many people down in the great room. It is rather quiet and grim. Low conversation and not much of it.

Dean jerks his head toward a table. “You two get some food,” he says. “I’ll talk to the management.”

Sam looks at the bowls of stew and thick hunks of bread on the tables. The generous slices of cheese. He shakes his head. “Not a good idea on Castiel’s stomach,” he says. “I wouldn’t risk making him ill.”

The heavy smell of rosemary curls around the air, with spilt beer and long-cooked beef. It is thick and stirring. Castiel wants it, desperately, but he also knows that the weight would tear him open. They’d tried stew a few days ago and it left him vomiting and shaking.

None of them want to repeat that.

The innkeeper looks like a humorless man. Something to the set of mouth, something of an implied sneer. Castiel doesn’t like him as soon as he sees him.

He offers them two rooms- “One for the mated pair and one for the extra,” he grumbles.

Castiel feels the blood flow out of his face when he hears the words. Feels himself freeze in place. He pulls his cloak a little tighter around his body.

It doesn’t matter that he left, it doesn’t matter how far from the kingdom he is, everyone still knows. Everyone will always know.

Dean leans forward, dangerously, into the innkeeper’s space.

“Do you know,” he asks, his voice barely more than a growl, “who I am?”

“You’re the Winchester pup,” the innkeeper barks back. “We all know who you are around here. Think you’re some sort of big hero because you butted heads in a war four years ago and lost? Had to turn back to your daddy and alpha for help? Might impress the people in your city, but not around here.”

“Do you know,” Dean asks, leaning in a little closer, “who he is?”

He points to Castiel.

“Your bitch,” the innkeeper spits.

“Novak,” Castiel says, finding his voice and his blood suddenly. “The last living prince and heir to the empire.” He lets his cloak fall away, just enough. Fixes his gaze on the innkeeper, who has paled this time. “I would be careful what you say about bitches and their betrothed husbands  from now on, if I wanted to live to say more later.”

The innkeeper nods slightly. “Of course,” he says.

“Of course what?” Castiel replies.

“Of course, my lord,” the innkeeper blusters.

They get the two largest rooms, upstairs. Fine beds and large fireplaces. Not as comfortable as the house, but still warm and soft and dear.

Still only two rooms. Customary. Omegas don’t get their own rooms.

“I can sleep in Sam’s room,” Dean says. “It will be fine.”

Castiel’s heart races. “No,” he blurts and Dean’s face clouds. Unreadable.

“Please,” he says. “Please don’t leave me here alone. I’m not- if they knew I was alone, they would-”

Dean’s face darkens, thunderous. He nods. “I’ll take the floor,” he says.

His hand settles possessively over his sword.

* * *

 

When the innkeeper had said mated pair, Dean’s heart went so fast in his chest that he thought his blood would spill out of him. And then he had asked him to stay.

Now he lays on the floor of the room, under a heavy blanket, watching the vague shape of Castiel on top of the bed.

His hair is dark and curled on top of the pillow. He sleeps deeply, his breath steady and heavy. No snoring. Nothing.

His breath startles suddenly and he sits up in bed.

Dean sits up too, and looks at Castiel.

There is just enough light in the room, moonlight pouring through the window, to see his open eyes, staring wide open through the space.

“Cas?” Dean asks.

Castiel turns suddenly and looks at him .

Blue eyes, like lightning on the air.

“Dean,” he breathes.

He lays back in the bed.

Rain falls suddenly against the windows. Lightning snaps bright and thunder follows.

Dean doesn’t sleep for a long, long time. 


	13. Chapter 13

_There’s something chasing him. Something big and tall, something huge. Something huge is chasing him and Castiel is very, very small. And there is nothing he can do. He can only run. He can only run and keep running from the thing that’s coming. He knows, though, that the running will only, can only, do so much good. He’s going to be caught, he’s going to be-_

He sits up, in the room and tries to remember everything. Where he is. Who he is. What’s happened. He’s thinking, he’s thinking as fast as he was running and nothing’s coming when he hears a voice.

“Cas?” someone asks. Their voice is gravelly from being still and quiet.

He turns and looks.

_Oh. Yes._

“Dean,” he says, softly. Remembering.

 _Alpha. Pack_.

He falls back asleep.

 

* * *

 

When Castiel wakes up the next morning, he doesn’t say anything for a long time.

There’s a porcelain washbasin opposite the bed. A bowl and a pitcher of water with a small towel. It’s not a full bath, like he’s used to, but it’s a godsend out here on the road.

Dean stands before it, pouring water on the cloth, bathing.

Dean is so much taller than Castiel, and broader through the body, too. When Castiel was at is his most muscular, he was lean and strong, built like a runner. Dean, though, Dean is built bulky and thick. Strong and dense. His arms are tanned where his shirt usually stops, midway to his elbow. Freckles cover his back.

Freckles and a multitude of whisper thin scars.

They pepper his shoulders and up his spine. All over. Tiny. They don’t look like whip marks, either.

Castiel watches Dean from where he lies, trying to keep his heart and breathing even.

There is no mirror, so Dean does not see himself as he wipes his face and arms and armpits. His smell dissipates a little in the room, and something to it makes Castiel’s breath nearly hitch. Something deep and sweet, like pine sap. Something homey and close.

Castiel squints his eyes closed.

Tells himself to ride with Sam today. 


	14. Chapter 14

Castiel rides in front of Sam, his legs stretched wide in the saddle. He looks ahead as they ride, steadfast. He doesn't speak at all as they ride.

There is a sternness to his character that Sam can't quite get a handle on. Something tense and tight. He always holds himself upright completely. He doesn't even lay in a bed relaxed. He always looks like someone is watching him intently. He looks like he's under constant scrutiny. Like someone has watched him long enough that the eyes are there even when there's no one else around.  

He sits as stiff as a board in the saddle, a rigid line in front of Sam.

He asked to ride with him today. He's not really sure _why_. It doesn't really seem like he likes him at all.

Dean rides ahead of them, quickly. His horse is faster than Sam's, much less broad in the saddle and quick. Light.

Dean is far ahead of both of them and has been for quite some time.

"Your brother," Castiel murmurs suddenly, "he's the crown prince, yes?"

Sam nods. "Yeah," he answers. "He was born first, and he'll take the pack as alpha."

"The kingdom," Castiel continues, "when he was gone, did they try to give it to you?"

"Yes," Sam replies. "I didn't want it, though. I wasn't...I was never born to rule." His mouth twitches into a faint smile. "They didn't think I'd be an alpha, anyway. I was born early, frankly, it was a miracle that I lived."

Castiel doesn't say anything for a long, long time. Quiet. "You're very kind," he says. "I think there's less to ruling than birth and much more to kindness."

Sam isn't sure where it came from.

They don't speak for the rest of  the ride.

* * *

Dean rides as fast as he can ahead of them. It's not that fast, really, uphill through forest. It's dense and slow. Difficult. He has to think a lot about it as he goes, lots of ways to think through the wood. Distracting, in its way.

Meditative.

And that's all Dean wants right now.

Castiel hasn't even looked at him all day.

He woke up about an hour after Dean did. Greeted him softly. Got dressed.

Asked to ride with Sam.

He hasn't said anything else to him or looked at him at all.

He can't figure out what he did. What he said.

Dean rides on.

 

* * *

The next place they stop isn't an inn. It's another house, like the one by the lake. There are no lit lanterns, though, or warm hearths. There are small, thick windows and a heavy wooden door.

Castiel and Sam unhorse. Sam guides the horse to the barn, leaving Castiel to stand on the wide open porch of the house by himself.

Up above, the stars wink alight.  

Castiel watches them, the shapes they form, the lines and stories.

They're farther north than he's ever been. The stars are new. Unfamiliar. Their locations are uncertain, the stories unknown to him.

He doesn't know what their locations mean. Information written in a language he doesn't know.

Castiel watches the sky when there's noise coming from near the barn.

Castiel doesn't believe in gods or angels or portents or fate.

There's something about the light though. The moon.

It shoots through the clouds suddenly, catches the shape of Dean.

He stands broad and tall against the light, catching the shape of his shoulders and the color of his hair, washed silver through the moonlight.

Castiel thinks of the color of his eyes suddenly. The soft way of his voice, his freckles scattered in one more language he can't read.

It hurts, suddenly.

Castiel _wants_ him.

Castiel wants him so badly.

He turns away. Leans his head against the wall of the house.

The realization, it steals the hunger out of his bones

 

 


	15. Chapter 15

 

It's dusty inside of the house, which isn't surprising. They went further today than they probably should have but they're all anxious to get back to the city. It's smaller than the capital Castiel grew up in- probably has fewer people there than his entire palace staff.

Dean brings the lantern inside and peers around.

No one's there. Sheets cover the furniture. A dry woodpile sits next to the hearth.

Dean places the lantern beside the hearth. "Can you pull the sheets off of things? I'll start a fire."

Castiel nods. He looks a little paler than usual. Exhausted.

He pulls off the sheets carefully, turning them so the dust doesn't scatter onto the air. He coughs as he works.

Dean lays the fire quickly, and it's lit by the time Sam is done stabling the horses

He comes inside with their bags. He looks tired, worn a little thin. "Have you had anything to eat today?" he asks Castiel.

Castiel looks at Sam. His face twists a little and he shakes his head. "No," he answers. "We were riding so long, it just...it slipped my mind."

Dean closes his eyes, takes long, deep breaths.

Sam sighs. "You can't do that," he says. "You won't get any better if you do that."

Castiel doesn't say anything. Dean doesn't either.

Sam pulls out a packet of bread and smoked fish. He hands a thick slice to Castiel. "Here," he says. "Eat something."

Castiel takes is from him.

"I'm going to go wash," Sam says. "I'll be back from the well in a bit."

He stomps out of the room, leaving Dean and Castiel alone.

"Cas," Dean says after a few minutes. "You have to eat something. Please."

Castiel's jaw is held tight. It's suddenly weird, a new sharpness that points out of him. Something Dean hasn't seen in him yet, something that brings up every protective, commanding Alpha thing inside of him.

What is he supposed to do when the most obvious threat to Castiel is _himself_?

 

* * *

His hands shake as he holds the bread.

He's not hungry. He doesn't want it. He doesn't want it at all. He can't stand the thought of food at all, of eating something or drinking something.

He just wants- he just wants.

"Cas," Dean says. "Please. Just a couple of bites."

His voice isn't quite stern and it isn't quite pleading. It doesn't make him hungry, but it does make him take a bite of bread and fish. Chew. Swallow.

He sighs heavily. He feels like he is shaking apart. Like he's broken, too broken to ever be fixed.

Dean looks at him, a little worried. Something soft and sad in his brow.

"Are you okay?" he asks.

Castiel nods. He shivers a little bit.

It's cooler up here. He pulls his cloak around his shoulders a little tighter. Secure.

"Are you cold?" he asks.

"A little," Castiel answers. "I'll be fine."

Dean frowns. He stands  and pulls a chair closer to the fire. "Sit," he says. "Warm up. I'll find the kettle. You need your tea."

Castiel moves to the chair by the fire and sits. The fire helps, but he still feels cold and tired and hollow and sad.

Dean comes back with the kettle and the tea. "Sam should uh...be back with water soon," he murmurs.

"Thank you," Castiel says. "For everything."

Dean pauses, standing, and looks at him, frowning.

"Thank you for taking me out of there but not...not _buying_ me," he replies. "I'm sorry I'm not the right kind of omega, that I'm not cheerful or...I'm sorry I'm so willful. That I'm not what you bought." He pulls his legs up into the chair with him, his knees in tight to his chest. "I just want to go home," he murmurs. "I haven't...I haven't gotten to go home since my heat came when I was fourteen. And you and Sam, you're so kind to me. So generous and-"

Dean has come next to him suddenly, so near. His head is bowed. He falls to his knees suddenly.

And Castiel, for some reason, he reaches out and touches him.

"I swear," Dean says. "As long as you want me. As long as you need me. I will protect you. I swear."

Castiel can't say anything, he just leans forward and kisses the top of his head.

 

* * *

 

Dean stands and turns away, just as Sam comes back into the house. He's not sure...he's not sure what just happened between them. He's not sure why he made his personal contract with him so engaged and real. He's not sure why he told him and he's not sure what the touch meant. What the kiss meant. He just knows that something between them just changed.

"Good," Sam says, a little breathlessly. "You got the kettle. Go ahead and get water ready for him. He needs the tea."

Dean tries not to notice the tension in Castiel's frame as he sits there.

"You should finish eating before you take your tea," Sam says. "It's more effective on a full stomach."

Dean hefts a bucket of the water over near the fire. He fills the kettle and looks at Castiel.

Castiel looks at the food in his hands and he looks up, at Dean. At the kettle.

Castiel nods and takes another bite.

 

* * *

There are two beds.

Castiel looks at them for a long moment, shivering under the cloak.

Sam looks at him, worried. "You shouldn't be this cold," he says, frowning. "We're moving a bed closer to the fire. You're sleeping there. If you're this cold in the morning...we'll figure it out."

Castiel nods, shivering, his breath shuddering as he shakes.

Dean stands apart from them, frozen. He nods, suddenly, and grabs a bed at one end of the room. He drags it out of the wide doorway through the large room to right in front of the hearth. He looks at them both and nods.

Castiel feels himself pale a little bit. "Oh-okay," he says. "Thank you."

Sam heads into the other room, leaving Dean and Castiel in there to themselves.

Dean steps forward carefully and gently pulls the cloak from Castiel's shoulders. He hangs it near the door.

Castiel carefully unbuttons his vest and his trousers. He pulls them off and sets them down, folded, near the bed. He crawls onto the bed and under the blankets, still shivering. Still cold.

He's not sure how long he lays there, freezing, before he sits up and looks over the edge of the bed where Dean is laying.

"Dean," he says. "Dean, please...please get in the bed with me."

Dean turns over and looks at him in the dim firelight.

"Are you...are you sure?" Dean asks, his voice husky.

Castiel nods a couple of times.

Dean climbs in with him and Castiel tugs the blankets over them both.

Dean curls up close and warm next to him, his body a current of warmth against him. The heat of him makes something desperate and uncomfortable inside of him unclench, easy that _want_.

Dean wraps his arm over Castiel's body, pulls in close and tight next to him.

Castiel can smell him, so close to him here. He can smell his horse and his sweat and the trees of outside. He can smell that elemental part of him, the earthiness, the minerality, the iodine and sea texture to his anatomy.

Castiel falls asleep, warm.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


	16. Chapter 16

Dean pulls Castiel close to his body. His shirt is the same one Dean brought him back from the palace in. It is made of finely woven cotton, one of the softest pieces of material Dean has ever touched. They don't get cotton this far north. It's too cold in the summers to support the crop and it's too expensive to import. Wool doesn't weave this soft and silk doesn't feel this way. It doesn't breathe like this. It doesn't let scent waft through, or warmth.

Castiel's body feels cold at first but then it turns into a solid current of warmth. So close like this, Dean can smell Castiel, really _smell_ him.

He smells like the day in spring when the first trees begin to bloom, when the dew and rains are fresh. It is the sweetest, cleanest smell in the world. It is Dean's _favorite_ smell in the world.

Castiel's breath is slow and easy as he sleeps. Even and cool and deep and sweet. His hair is dark and soft against his face.

"Dean," he murmurs softly in his sleep.

Dean feels a warm blush surround him.

He falls asleep contented.

 

* * *

When Castiel wakes up, something is _wrong_.

His heart is racing in his chest, thundering in it like someone beating a small drum. He can't stop _shivering_ even though the fire still burns low and he's covered in blankets and Dean is holding him. He's colder than he's been in years, the feeling is all wrong.

He's shivering, so constantly his teeth start to chatter.

"Cas?" Dean mutters suddenly. "Are you awake?"

"C-c-cold," he chatters. "So c-c-c-cold."

Dean sits up suddenly, disturbing his blankets and inviting in a gust of _frigid_ air. He gasps with it and squints his eyes closed.

"Cas?" Dean asks, suddenly sounding quite lucid. "Stay here, I'm getting Sam."

He gets up suddenly and dashes away, leaving Castiel to shiver.

It feels like _forever_ and then he is flanked by Sam and Dean, a hand laid over his forehead.

" _Fuck_ ," Sam hisses. "Dean, go to the well. We're going to need water."

Dean nods and dashes off.

"No," Castiel says weakly. "No, don't go-"  
"Castiel," Sam interrupts, "we have to induce a heat."

Castiel doesn't say anything, just closes his eyes and tries to hold onto the warmth inside of himself. "Th-thought it was too d-dangerous," he stutters out.

"We've put it off too long," Sam says. "You're crashing and you're not going to- you're not going to make it through the week if you don't have a heat. We can do it safely- I mean, this isn't ideal but there aren't going to be any strangers coming by or anything."

"Yuh-yuh- you're both a-a-a-a-a-alpha," he shivers. 

"We're capable of controlling ourselves," Sam bites.  "We can't get to the city in time to do it the right way and now we have to do it. Now."

His hazel eyes are serious.

Castiel nods.

Sam nods a couple of times himself.

"Okay," Castiel says. "Okay. I trust you."

 

* * *

Castiel says it and Sam sits there with the enormity of it.

They have to induce his heat. He's still healing and he's going into crisis. Nothing about this situation is ideal. So much can go wrong.

"I don't want it like this," he says.

"I-I-I know," Castiel answers. He is shaking so hard he's having trouble speaking.

Sam can't quite figure out when he and Castiel became _friends_. 


	17. Chapter 17

Dean feels worry like an itch he can’t scratch. He walks the short distance to the well and fills the two buckets with water. He walks back to the house, a little slower, but with that worry still informing his every motion.

When he comes back inside, Sam is sitting on the bed next to Castiel, with a series of objects laid out on the bed next to him.

Castiel is still shaking, still vibrating with the illness that has swept suddenly through him.

“What’s wrong?” Dean asks.

“We have to induce heat,” Sam answers. His voice is barely more than a growl.

“He’s crashing; he’s gone too long without one and his body is trying to trigger it. The tea isn’t letting him, though, so we have to-"

Dean lunges through space to grab his brother by his lapels, pull him down onto the floor where Dean can press the breath out of his lungs.

"What is _wrong_ with you?" Dean shouts. "What would he do with a heat? It could kill him and what would he even _do_ in a heat, Sam?"

"Dean!" Sam barks. "We _have_ to. I don't want to do this and-"

"C-c-cold," Castiel whispers from the bed.  "D-D-Dean. I wuh-want this. So cold."

"Having a heat _might_ kill him. Not having one _will_ , though," Sam says from under Dean. "He made his decision."

Dean lets go of his brother's shirt and stands up. He brushes his hands through his hair and nods.

"I'm sorry," he rumbles. "I'm sorry." He nods again and sits down on the bed next to Castiel. Lets his fingers be entwined into Castiel's.

 

* * *

Sam pulls the vial and needle out of his bag. He kneels by the bedside.

He bought it just in case. He didn't think he'd have to use it. He never wanted to use it. 

It's a dangerous thing, the clear liquid in this little vial. It's made with illegal medicine- a kind of wrong science. 

He pushes the needle through the thick wax septum at the top of the bottle. He pulls it out.

"This induces heat. I'm going to stick you with this needle right at your artery and then- then we'll see," he answers.

Castiel is pale and shivering. His lips are blue.

Dean sits next to him, pale but for different reasons.

"Where did you get that?" he asks. His voice is barely above a whisper.

Sam looks away. "When I bought the tea, I bought it as well. The apothecary had insisted. They said that it was as important to hold it off as cause it."

Dean shifts a little.

"You're sure?" he asks Castiel.

There's something worried and fond in his tone and expression. Something protective. It's something Sam hasn't heard since before Dean was captured, all that time ago. Something so close that's also so far.

Castiel nods. He pulls his arm out from the blankets.

Sam pulls the sleeve of his shirt up and pushes the needle into the crook of his arm.

Castiel closes his eyes and bites his lips.

His fingers turn white where he's gripping Dean's hand.

 

* * *

Castiel feels the needle, and minutes later, he's so goddamn warm he can't move. Instead of over cool and frantic, he feels like he's burning up and he can't move at _all_.

"Hot," he whispers. "Warm."

He feels languid and empty, his skin eased. He's so hungry, suddenly. He wants, desperately and thoroughly, but he feels so tired and loose that he can't really move.

"Cas?" Sam asks. "Cas, are you okay? Tell me how you're feeling."

"Warm," he murmurs. "Tired."

His bones feel heavy. If they weren't so heavy, he'd pull the blanket off of himself, he'd lay himself against Dean's cool skin.

Sam lays his cool fingers against his pulse point and counts.

"Hey, Cas, I need you to talk to me, okay? Can you tell Dean a story?" He says.

"A story?" he asks. He is almost too tired to speak.

"Yeah, Cas, tell me a story," Dean says next to him. "Any kind of story you like."  
"I don't think I know any," he answers, slowly. He feels like everything is happening too slowly, like the way trees wake up in the winter.

"That's okay," Dean answers. "Just talk to me, okay? What do you like? Talk to me some more about the stars, okay?"

Castiel inhales, long and slow. "There's a hunter, in the stars," he murmurs.

He feels another needle.

Suddenly everything is made of _fire._  


 

 

 

 


	18. Chapter 18

Sam pokes a needle in Castiel and he stops moving. His eyes settle closed, sleepy and lazy. His breath slows, his teeth stop chattering.

He makes a long, low moaning sound, like a keening sigh.

Sam's brow furrows and he lays his hand over Castiel's forehead.

Castiel's hand has grown lax in Dean's. Everything about him looks completely unstrung, like something inside of him has been cut.

"Hot," he says. His voice is so low that the word is barely spoken, more aspirated.

"Cas?" Sam asks. "Cas, are you okay? Tell me how you're feeling."

"Tired," he answers, after a terrible silence of slow, heavy breathing. "Warm."

Sam counts his heartbeats and then he looks up at Dean. He looks concerned. Terrified.

"Hey, Cas, I need you to talk to me, okay? Can you tell Dean a story?" he asks. His voice sounds barely controlled, barely containing the worry he's feeling.

"A story?" Castiel asks. His eyes blink slowly.

"Yeah, Cas," Dean says next to him, trying not sound urgent or scared. "Cas, tell me any kind of story you like."

Castiel's head turns slowly. His blue eyes look foggy and distant. Unclear. Sweat has broken across his face and he's beginning to flush. "I don't think I know any," he slurs.

"That's okay," Dean says, just trying to keep Castiel in reality. Functioning. "Just talk to me, okay? Tell me more about those stars you like so much."

Sam has pulled the bottle back out, another needle too. Dean looks at him and then he clutches Castiel's hand.

"There's the hunter," Castiel murmurs. His gaze is soft, almost fond.

Sam pushes the needle into his arm and Castiel gasps and bites his lip.

His grip returns, furious.

He curls into himself, a tight ball. His hand stays, pulling at Dean.

 

* * *

There is a literal fire burning in his stomach. This is nothing like anything else that has happened to him. This is urgent and painful and desperate, this isn't the kind of low hunger inside of him that he usually has. This will consume him.

This is hunger that will eat him alive.

"Dean," he pants. "Dean, can't...keep...help."

He feels breathless and desperate and broken. He doesn't feel so heavy, instead he feels like a fire made into flesh, to writhe and twist on this bed. A live current. A lightning bolt.

"Cas, I need you to talk to me, okay? What are you feeling?" Dean's voice is low and deep and concerned.

Castiel _wants_ him.

He reaches out, with the hand that isn't clutching at Dean's hand and scratches at him, pulls him in.

" _You_ ," he moans. "Need _you_."

"Cas," Dean answers. "Cas, we can't. You're not well, okay?"

 

* * *

Castiel's face falls and he frowns. "Don't leave me," he whines.

Dean looks up at Sam, terrified.

"We can't leave him ," he says. "He's going through his heat but he might take a turn for the worse. I have willow to help with the fever, in case it gets too high but he has to flush everything out of him. His hormones, his slick, his pheromones."

Castiel takes a long, suffering breath. "Don't leave me," he whines again .

"How long will this last?" Dean asks.

"Three, maybe four days," Sam answers. "We've got food. There's a town not too far away, you can ride out and get-"

" _No_ ," Castiel hisses loudly from the bed. "Don't _leave_."

Dean looks at him, flushed and wanting and pained.

"I won't leave you," he says, firmly. "I won't...I won't."

He can't articulate it, can't say the thing Castiel wants from him. He won't do that, either, but he can't say it.

 

* * *

Castiel feels something begin to slide down his legs, something wet.

His slick has come back.

"Dean," he pants. "Dean, want you. Need you. Have to- have to have you."

 

 

 


	19. Chapter 19

Castiel writhes and screams on the bed, and Dean holds his hand. He lets Castiel hold him as tightly and closely as he wants. He lets him murmur into his skin he lets him bites against his neck and shoulders and arms.

He doesn't let him kiss him though, and he insists that they both wear clothes. He knows they can't be comfortable for him; his heat has brought a skyrocketing fever that burns inside of him. He's so warm against Dean that he's moved the bed away from the fire, so warm he's making Dean sweat.

"Dean," Castiel whines, "Dean, please, please-"  
"Cas," he answers. "Cas, I can't- we can't. When it passes, you won't have-"

"No," he whines, his voice hitting that higher-omega pitch, that whining sound that drives Dean crazy. That higher register of   _vulnerable, aching, needing, wanting, waiting, open_. It's a familiar sound- there was a lot of it when he was captured.

"No, Dean," he whimpers. "Want this. Want it. Don't- don't tell me what I don't want."

Sam spends as much time as he can either at the well or in his room. He checks up, three or four times a day but the smells of two Alphas, it's heady. It's more than any of the three of them can stand.

They sit on the bed in front of the fire, Castiel curled up in his lap.

"Cas, I couldn't do this to you," he says. "I won't do this to you."

This is the second day.

Castiel whines and squirms.  
Dean grabs a cool cloth and drapes it over his brow.

There is a large damp spot over both of their laps where Castiel's slick has oozed out and covered both of them.

Dean tries not to smell it. It's like a goddamn drug.

"I could see stars where they had me," he says softly. "They had me in tents and then dungeons but there was always- I could always see stars wherever I was."

Castiel whimpers on his lap, his hands tangled in his shirt.

"Two years and the stars are the only things that kept me together. Still don't know their names, though," he says. "I'm not too clever, like you are."

"No," Castiel huffs softly. "No, you're so smart and so kind and so strong and I want you so much; I could tell you everything about the stars, Dean, _everything_ you could ever want to know. It's all I'm good for, please, please never let me go please _fuck_ me, _breed me, knot me."_  


  
_"_ Cas," Dean says, running his hand through his hair. Castiel leans into it and sighs heavily. "Cas, please, just...it hurts. I know. But wait, okay? Wait for me."

Castiel whines, high.

He writhes, he sighs, he cries for another two hours and then he falls asleep.

Dean tries to ignore how hard his dick is. How easy this could be.

 

* * *

On the morning of the fourth day, the fever breaks and Castiel sleeps solidly, firmly, for twelve hours straight.

When he wakes up, there's a large washbasin full of water with a cloth and some soap. A set of clothes that definitely too large for him. A bowl of porridge and some dried fish.

He aches from exhaustion and dehydration. He feels like he did when he woke up by the lake all that time ago.

He washes his face and arms and he moves to wash his legs and belly and he moans.

He's hard, still. All these days and he didn't come, he's just aching and uncomfortable.

He lays back on the bed and jacks at his cock a few times. He moans at the sensation. He cants his hips upward, he jerks at the feeling.

He hasn't been hard, he hasn't _wanted_ this in so long and it's strange. It's something he didn't realize he'd been missing, there's so much that he's been missing. He can smell the ghost of Dean's sweat and anxiety on the linens and on his own skin, and it's like a new color.

He keeps jacking at his cock and smelling that earthy smell of him, like water and sweat and he's rushing towards that sensation, hurtling forward through time and space and he's coming and he cries aloud, " _Dean,"_ like it's the only name in the universe, the only name in the world. The only word, the whole of creation.

The heat being gone, he realizes, suddenly, it hasn't changed _anything_.

"Goddamnit," he murmurs, wiping the come from his hands and stomach and cock.

"No, no, no, no, no," he says, curling inward. "No, no, _no_."

He stays there until the door opens and they come back in.

"Castiel!" Sam cries when he sees him. "How are you feeling?"

Dean isn't near him. It's just Sam.

Castiel sighs heavily.

"Tired," he answers, honestly.

  
_God_ , he's so tired.

"How much further, to your capital?" he asks, groggily.

"If we leave tomorrow, early in the morning, we should get there late in the night," Sam answers. "Very, very late, but we'd be there. We're close. May I?" He gestures to Castiel, concern written over his face.

Castiel nods slightly and sits up.

Sam counts his heart and feels his temperature. "Have you been eating? Drinking?"

His stomach growls suddenly, answering the question.

"You need to eat something," Sam says gently. "You've been through a lot and the sooner you eat and drink, the sooner you can be on your feet."

He has a memory of Sam checking on him while he was fevered, his cool hands and gentle voice.

"Thank you," Castiel says.

Sam smiles. "You probably want to get dressed. Your clothes were...slicked. We went and washed them in a creek but they won't dry until later. You'll have to make do with Dean's."

Castiel looks at the pile of clothes. "Where is Dean?" he asks.

Sam flushes a little. "He's checking in on the horses. He needed some...some air."

Castiel looks at the floor. He closes his eyes. "Please...please don't...please don't...think of me like that," he says softly. "I try...I've tried so hard not to be that and I can't- it just keeps happening and I can't stop it."

Sam sits down, next to Castiel. He is so much taller than him, so much more broad in his body, so much stronger. "Castiel," he says, "it's not your fault. We know you. You're our...you're our _friend_."

Castiel leans onto Sam's shoulder.

"I hate the things my body does," he says. "And I hate the way other people see my body."

"I know," Sam says. "Dean knows, too."

Castiel closes his eyes for a moment. He exhales and sits up. "I'm going to get dressed now," he says.

Sam leaves him.

 

 

 


	20. Chapter 20

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cw: Mentions of rape, mentions of assault/harassment  
> Shit gets kind of heavy.

Castiel tumbles out of the house like a newly born foal. Maybe that's the connection Dean's brain draws because he's just coming back from the barn, but it's the best one he can think of- he looks like he can't quite figure out what his legs are for or how many he has. He's dressed though- that's a change from the past few days. His clothes are hanging up in the light not too far from here, so he's dressed in some of Dean's.

The shirt is too big for him, parted over his shoulders such that the bones peer up over the collar, shifting loosely on top of him. The pants are belted tightly over him, gathering the material.

He's so slim, a little smaller than he was even a couple of days ago, the fever burning what little fat he had put on straight away. He looks a little peaky and pale, too.

"Whoah there," Dean says as Castiel moves trippingly down the stairs towards the barn. "How are you feeling?"

Castiel huffs a small laugh. "Terrible," he answers. "Like I've been beaten. With a chair."

Dean laughs back. He wipes the dust from his hands on the seat of his pants. "You should eat something," he says. "It'll help."  
"I had the fish you left out for me, and the water, too," he replies. "I didn't want to make myself ill, though. After I'd had a little I felt sick."

Dean frowns. "Is that okay?" he asks. "Did you talk to Sam?"

Castiel laughs. "He said it was normal. Recovering from a heat can be difficult and my recovery might be a little...more difficult."

Something settles between them, something heavy and uncomfortable, something woolen and thick.

"I'm sorry," Castiel mutters softly. "I didn't want to make you- I didn't want to make you uncomfortable." He pauses, heavily. "Thank you for not- for not _touching_ me...like...like _that_."

What he asked for and what he said dissolve out into the thick something between them.  

Dean bites his lip. He shuts his eyes. He can't look at him right now, not for this.

"There were a lot of...lot of omegas where they took me," he grinds out. "What Sam...what Sam put in you...it isn't always used to...to _save_ people," he says. He swallows. He opens his eyes but he's looking down. He can't look at him, he can't discuss this...this _terrible_ thing. This terrible thing that he couldn't stop. "By the time I was found and they swept through the camp, the ones that weren't dead...they were so far gone...they...they didn't let themselves make it back to the capital."

He pauses. He closes his eyes again. "I know that that wasn't _you,"_ he says. "I know that it's a part of you but it's not who you _are_."

He exhales, long and slow.

When he looks back up, Castiel is gone.

* * *

It's more than he can handle.

Dean says it and it's like- it's like a burst of lightning or a forest fire.

He says it and Castiel can't be there anymore. He can't- he can't handle this any more.

He can't handle this awful world and all of the awful things inside of it. He can't breathe around what's happened to Dean or what's happened to him- the fact that if he were someone different, if he weren't a prince, maybe he wouldn't have even been _sold_. Maybe he would have been taken, stolen and driven out of himself and his body before his starvation could be a choice.  Maybe those dark, those awful things insinuated to him by his Uncle before he was sold and hidden away would have happened- maybe more than terrible whispers he took to bed with himself, awake all night with terrible fear.

He leans against a wall and inhales, exhales. He feels something like a knife inside of his stomach, a knife held against his throat and breath and voice. He exhales again and he screams. He screams and he keeps screaming, he can't stop.

He can't handle the naked awfulness of it all. He can't.

He'll never be a person again.

* * *

Sam hears it and he tears out of the room to see Castiel on the floor, leaning against the wall, screaming.

His eyes are shut tight and his hands are curled around his face.

He sobbing, suddenly, eyes clenched tight. A broken, ugly noise.

Dean bursts in from outside after Sam.

"Cas," Sam says, as softly as he can be heard. "Cas- _Cas_ ," he finally says, loudly, sternly. "Cas, what _happened_?"

He stops screaming, he stops sobbing, he just-

He just _stops_.

"I want," he chokes out, his voice cracked and breaking, "I want to be safe."

"Cas," Dean says next to him, and his voice sounds as wrecked as Castiel's, "Cas, you-"

Castiel gets up suddenly and he throws himself against Dean, fisting his hands in his shirt. He sobs and he grabs at him, he leans on him.

Dean lets his arms settle around Castiel's body.

He holds him there for a long time.

Castiel sobs.

 


	21. Chapter 21

Dean smells so right. He smells like the horses and leather, he smells like salt and air. He smells like minerals and dirt, he smells tall and strong.

His body is firm against him, his arms are strong over his shoulders, his hands are warm and heavy on his back. His breath is steady and warm into his hair.

Castiel feels so heavy against him; he feels a total, overwhelming weight on top of him. He feels the weight of his body, the weight of his fear, the weight of his decisions.

He's so _tired._  


  
_"_ I'm so tired," he says into Dean's chest. "I'm so tired."

"I know," Dean whispers. "I know. It's okay to be tired. We just have to ride a little more and then we'll be somewhere you can rest, I promise."

Castiel grips his shirt, melting against him. "Okay," he says.

"We'll leave as soon as the sun comes up tomorrow," Dean murmurs. "I promise."

Castiel nods against him.

"Can you try and eat something?" Dean asks. "You can rest for the rest of the day afterward, and eating something will help make you feel better, I promise."

"Okay," Castiel sighs.

Dean guides him gently to the bed near the fire, lets him sit down gently.

"I'll be right back," he says. "I set up a trap in the woods, it should have caught something by now. There's dried fish and tack for now, okay?" He presses a piece of the dry bread in his hand and Castiel nods again.

"Are you going to be okay if I go?"  he asks.

Castiel looks at Dean, who is kneeling so his green eyes can look into his.

He nods.

"I won't be gone long," he says.

And he leaves.

Castiel chews absently on some of the tack, and Sam who has just been standing there, says softly, "How much do you know about what happened to Dean?"

* * *

Castiel sits on the bed with tack in his hands. He breaks it apart and eats small pieces of it at a time.

"He told me about the omegas," he says. "That's- that's it."

Sam flinches.

He can't forget them. He still has dreams about one of them, the girl with empty eyes who stole his knife from his belt to-

He takes a deep breath.

"He was in capture for two years," he says. "We found him by _accident_. I had ridden out because someone had complained about poaching. I'd buried him- he had a grave with an empty casket in it." He pauses, the heaviness of it. "When we found him, he wasn't the same person. We didn't _recognize_ him. The didn't let him bathe, they didn't cut his hair, they barely fed him and there were- there were- one of the leaders of the insurrection, he was-" he pauses, swallowing against the memory, "he could do terrible things with just a knife."

He coughs. "Dean didn't speak for eight months," he says. "Not a word. I didn't hear my brother's voice for almost three years- his voice or his laugh or any of the things that make him, you know, Dean."

There is a long silence between them.

"Why are you telling me this?" Castiel asks. "Why is it yours to tell?"

He looks up at Sam, his blue eyes like sharp hot fires set into the very soul of himself.

In that moment, he looks painfully powerful. Protective.

He looks like a king, and Sam feels very small in front of him.

"Because if there's anyone you can trust...if there's anyone who would understand you, it's him," he says.

"I know," Castiel says. "I've known." He runs the edge of his shirt around through his fingers. "Why does he...why does he care?" He asks softly, and every bit of the warrior, the lion, the king drains from his steely eyes and his shoulders and spine. "Why does he care?"

Sam feels the bottom fall out of his stomach.

He remembers, guiltily, how excited, how _happy_ Dean had been to ride off and bring Castiel back. To marry him, to touch him. And then the Castiel that had made Dean speak again hadn't been _real_.

  
_Because Dean loves you_ , he thinks.

"That's not mine to tell you," he says.

Castiel shifts on the bed. He pulls his legs up, crossing them.

"I'm so tired," he says softly.

"I know," Sam answers. "It's okay. You've been through a lot. You can be tired as long as you need."

Castiel takes another bite of tack.

He lays back down on the bed.

Sam prays Dean will be back soon.

 


	22. Chapter 22

"We're here," Dean says softly, suddenly, at about the fourth hour since the sun went down.

Castiel sits up a little higher in the saddle and looks around.

The capital of his own city was built of limestone, made in tall arches that bit against the top of the sky, glass windows like sad eyes staring into the people below, bustling and moving all hours of the day. The market expansive, standing above cobbled pathways that drained into the sewers. The walls that ring around it made of stone and iron. The palace at the center like a jewel, green gardens and fine quarters.

This is different.

The wall is made of rough grey stone with a huge gate of timber. There are a few lanterns along the edge and the silhouettes of patrolling guards but there is no sound of the city inside from here. Silence.

"Guard!" Sam shouts, his voice carrying high above the wall.

"What?" Someone answers. "Who goes there?"

"Your Princes," he answers.

There are a fraught few seconds, full of hurried whispering, and then the smaller gate opens, just enough to let their horses through.

"Your highnesses," the guard answers and Sam chuckles quietly. They ride into the city.

The streets are silent and unpaved. The houses are built of timber. The market cannot be seen. There is no cathedral, no library, no university. They pass a few people out on the streets- a couple of guards, a smith that is still burning through the night, sleepy apprentices running night errands- but there is no conversation, barely even acknowledgement.

The ride on towards a castle.

Castiel's city had a palace.

This is a castle.

It is built of sturdy stone bricks. It has its own gate. It stands unmovable and tall, indelicate and sturdy.

"Um," Dean murmurs, "this is...this is home."

The gate opens and they ride through and Castiel clutches Dean a little closer to him.

 

* * *

It's been almost two months since Dean's been back to the capital, but it feels like he never went.

Far away from the center of the continent- from the center of the _world-_ the mountains grow tall and imposing and the trees are huge and green. There is something eternal and unmovable about the land and the capital. Something constant and sturdy.

When they first brought him back here (in chains, he remembers, because he wouldn't stop running from them), he knew something suddenly- he knew that it actually was Sam and that he actually was _safe_.

He wept for the first time in _months_ when they brought him back here.

He feels Castiel grip him tightly, his hands and arms wiry and thin as they squeeze him.

"It's okay," Dean murmurs. "Most of the castle will be asleep and you don't have to talk to anyone you don't want to."

Castiel nods against his back just as a stablehand dashes out.

"Welcome back," he says, wiping his hands on a cloth. He takes the reigns from their horses as they all climb off. "I take your journey went well?" He looks downward- a hand Dean has never met before. A hand their father probably took in in the months they were away.

"What's your name?" Dean asks.

"Samandriel, your highness," he murmurs.

"Look at me, Samandriel," Dean says.

The hand is young and his face is round and open.

"My father, he might tell you to call him by his titles but you and me and my brother and-"

He pauses and looks at Castiel, who nods.

"And Castiel, we're Sam, Dean, and Castiel," he says. "No 'your highness' or 'sirrah.' Sam, Dean, Castiel," and he points at the hand, "Samandriel, okay?"

Samandriel the hand blushes a little and nods. "Yes- yes Dean," he says, and guides the horses away.

Dean inhales, long and slow, and then he turns to Sam.

"Let's head in," he says.

"He's not here now," Sam replies, answering the question he hadn't asked yet. "He told me he would leave for the hunt a week after I left to see you. He'll be there through the summer."

Dean feels something like relief. His father won't be back until the winter, if at all. Castiel will have plenty of time to get well before he sees him, before they have to have _that_ fight.

Castiel looks very tired, standing there in the torchlight, in the starlight.

"Let's get some food into you," he says softly. "And then maybe some sleep."

Castiel nods weakly.

They head inside.

 

 

 

 

 


	23. Chapter 23

Castiel remembers getting to the castle but he doesn't remember getting to a room or taking off his clothes or being tucked into a bed or falling asleep.

But morning has come and now he's here.

He blinks a few times and feels the heaviness of the blankets over him. They might be deeper into the spring, closer to summer every day, but they're far northeast from Castiel's-

From his homecountry.

He feels it, suddenly, despite the fact that he hasn't been there for nearly three months- he feels the fact that he left that place where he had lived his entire life and that he may- he may never see it again.

He could catch a fever, he could take a bad heat, he could have a bad childbirth, he could finally...he could finally succumb to his efforts at starvation. He is so far from his kingdom, the kingdom that he was born to rule- the kingdom that he will rule through Dean if he outlives his Uncle, out here in the middle of nowhere. The palace where he grew up, the horses he rode, the books he read, the floors he walked.

It's all _gone_.

He sits up suddenly and the strangeness of this place strikes him all over again.

The walls inside of this _castle_ he's inside are made of grey stone. The windows are small and made of thick, wobbling glass. The fireplace is huge but the fire burns low. There are heavy skins on the bed, bear and sheep by the feel of it. The rooms is vibrant with the smell of ashes and smoke and animals and sweat and leather and- and Dean. It is a small room, smaller than the bedroom in his quarters in the palace and smaller than the room where Dean had first taken him. There's a chair by the fire like there always is.

He's so tired of waking up in unfamiliar beds.

He's so tired.

The door opens suddenly and Dean walks in with a couple of bowls and look of surprise on his face once he sees Castiel.

"You're awake," he says, softly.

Castiel nods a couple of times. "I didn't remember coming up here," he says.

"You were out of it by the time we got to the castle. I wanted to make sure you got some good rest and..." He trails off. He comes into the room a little more.

"Are these your quarters?" Castiel asks.

Dean blushes a little, nodding. "I wanted to be here when you woke up so you wouldn't be, um, disoriented," he says. "Are you well?"

His stomach growls a little but he's okay. "Just...tired," he answers, smiling thinly.

Dean hands him a bowl of porridge, made of small beads of starch, pearls of potato suspended in cream with a thick pat of butter melting slowly.  He stirs it with the wooden spoon Dean gave him a few times and takes a bite. It's heavy, but good.

They eat in silence for a few moments and then Castiel pauses.

He looks at Dean and says softly, "Your brother...he told me after you were captured and recovered you didn't speak."

Dean stops moving. He doesn't look up or say anything.

"He said you didn't speak for- for eight months," he says.

Dean nods.

Castiel stirs the porridge a few times, quietly. "Why did you decide to speak again?"

 

* * *

Castiel asks the question and Dean feels time stop inside of him. Every process inside of his body freezes- his breath still in his lungs, his blood stops its endless circuit, and the thing that runs inside of his mind just stops.

He stops and he sighs, suddenly. Less of a sigh and more of an evacuation of his breath.

He inhales and looks for his voice and then he says, "I had- I had fallen in love."  
He pauses. The room is silent.

"When they captured me," he says, and he pauses, "I have scars. I don't have as many as I used to but I have scars. I have scars...please understand I have scars so that when they brought me back, they had to lock the doors. They had to give me something to keep me tired so I would heal instead of hurting myself. That long being- being _hurt,_ constantly, you don't heal back the same."  
He looks at the shape of Castiel's legs under the skins and blankets. The ghost of his hands under there.

"I've basically healed now," he says. "But I'm a different guy than I was before I was captured. That pain...what happened, it's a part of me now. So I need you understand what I mean when I talk to you about what happened. I'm not looking for pity or for you to think of me as some kind of thing that needs to be fixed or changed."

He pauses again.  
 _Christ_ , this is hard.

"Your uncle wrote letters, in your name," he says, finally. "Sam gave them to me, when I still wasn't sure if he was Sam or some kind of-" he huffs a laugh without humor, "Sorry, they would play games. There are things, drugs, you can give  man to make him think anything and being saved, it's a powerful hope when you're so long trapped. If you break that, you've broken the whole- the whole man." He coughs a little. Continues.

"When I wasn't sure if Sam wasn't some kind of trap again, he would give me the letters, letters he had written me and the letters in your name," he says. "Sam's letters, they were a trap. But the letters from you, they were _new._ I couldn't have made them up, really, I hadn't had anything like that and I'm not the storyteller in the family. First they were formal- all 'your lordship' and your full name and then they began to change. Told me about your riding or your studies or your drawing or your court. And then you started asking me questions- you asked so many of them, about me, about what I liked, what I looked like, about my home, about Sam and I couldn't- I couldn't leave them unanswered."  
He pauses again. He stirs his bowl, still mostly full of porridge.

"So I asked for a pen and paper the next time I saw Sam," he says. He coughs. "And I wrote you back."

He looks at Castiel for the first time since he started explaining. His face has grown drawn and pale- a look of devastation. Horror.

"If I seem- hah, if I seem over familiar sometimes, or over protective, or even- even distant, please try to understand," he says, and he finds now that his voice has become so low and quiet that is breaks and cracks, "please try to understand...a lie that had your name saved me. Saved more than my body...it uh, it pulled me out of Hell. The part of me that's not my body, the part of me that's still healing. I...uh, I loved a character that looked like you. And it's not that I don't- that you're not incredible and strong and _crazy_ and willful and amazing. It's just...you're a stranger to me, when I thought you were someone who had all of my secrets."

He coughs again and looks away. "I understand that the wedding- the betrothal isn't here anymore. And I invite you to stay here, to get well and accrue allies. My home is yours. But I won't pretend, and I won't make you pretend, that whatever was in the letters was somehow... _real_."

When he looks back at Castiel, he has not changed. He looks just as shocked, as horrified as he did moments ago.

He stands suddenly. He has to get air, the room has become so close and heavy.

"I'm- I'm sorry," he says, and then he practically runs away.

 

 

 


	24. Chapter 24

High summer in Dean's kingdom is like spring at the palace where Castiel grew up. The air is cool but not cold, the nights develop a chill, and everything is growing green and a tall and bright.

Castiel stretches, pulling his shoulder away from his spine, pulling the muscles. He sighs into it, comfortable.

The clothes he wears aren't as finely woven as the clothes he had back at the palace- there was a trunk packed for him, full of silks and baby clothes and jewels but Dean didn't take it. Costumes built for a life inside, in court with handmaidens and ladies in waiting.

Instead he dresses practically, in thickly woven shirts and pants. They're old, some of them, made for Dean or Sam when they were younger, and some of them are new and made for him. They all hang a little loose, even though in the months since he's been here he's put on weight and muscle, his body becoming broader and the muscle coming back. They gave him a horse, a huge, broad beast of an animal of the like they breed here in the mountain countries. She's beautiful, with a cream colored coat and brown eyes. He rides every day, and he spends so much time in the stables that the hands know to just leave her stall to him.

He reads again. He listens to Sam talk about borders and wars, anything he's missed in the years he spent practically in exile.

It's strange, that even though he's so far from the country he is expected to one day rule, he feels more connected to it here.

He hasn't seen Dean since he told him, nearly a month and a half ago now. He sends letters from where he goes, traveling through smaller villages and cities in the country, meeting with allies and weeding out wolves and minor bandits. They hear about him, but he doesn't send Castiel letters and he barely talks to him through Sam at all.

Castiel tries to pretend that he doesn't mind.

He grabs a thick piece of bread from the kitchen and walks out to the stables, to see his horse, Angel.

Her breath is warm against his hands and he speaks softly to her. "Hello, dearest," he says. "Should we ride today?"

The answer is always the same.

He brushes and saddles her, he leads her out, and then he rides.

It's not a far ride from the Castle to find a wood, and there he can ride for a good long time without seeing anyone.

The riding in this area is different than the riding he did when he was younger- it is dodging limbs and branches and roots. Angel is thicker and heavier than the horses he rode with back home and she moves not like a stream of water but instead as an inexorable force onward, with an incredible kind of deliberateness. It's a very different kind of thought, a different way of being active than galloping through the even straights and then leaping over the blocks. It's much less like running and much more like fencing. He likes it. It means he doesn't think.

Dean told him about the letters, about what they might have meant and then left in the night. Rode away and left Castiel here without a goodbye, without letting him talk to him, without letting him ask his own questions.

Castiel thinks a lot about those letters and whether or not Zachariah actually read the ones Dean sent.

Nothing about the mountainous, cold, forested country would support the fragile, demure creature his uncle so desperately wanted him to be. The creature Castiel actually is, though, that creatures thrives.

The cold air settles crisply in his lungs and he pulls Angel to a stop and sits quietly in the saddle, breathing for a few minutes.

There is more noise and life in the castle than Castiel ever saw in the palace. He is given more freedom to see the woods and the country and the city than he ever got back home. He is awarded more discretion. It is a very different place, this roughly textured land. The people are kind but in a gruff sort of way. The food is heavy. The clothes are sturdy, reused, and comfortable. There is very little acknowledgement of whatever position Castiel might hold, although Sam, Dean, and their Father are all regarded seriously, Castiel is more or less left to mind his own.

There is a flowering  vine that grows out here, among the moss and the trees, and as Castiel sits on horseback and looks at it for a long while, almost watching it bloom, and then he rides on.

The wood he is riding through is property of the king, some ancient rite Sam explained to him late one evening, something involving an ancient beast some king of old killed. It is one of the luxuries the royal family is afforded- they do not claim much in the way of jewels or gold or taxes, they demand even less by way of titles or silks.

Still, according to Sam, the King John is very firm on his rite to hunt there.

Sometimes, Castiel encounters iron cages, hanging from trees.

Sometimes, there is a telltale crunch of bones under Angel's hooves.

He rides out until he feels the gnaw of hunger inside of him, and then he rides back towards the castle.

He stables Angel, puts feed and water in her troughs and heads over to the kitchen.

He's stomping through the yard when he runs into Sam, who is pale. He looks tired and worried- he even looks like he's shaking.

"Castiel," he says, "where have you been?"

He frowns. "I was riding," he answers. "Why, what's wrong?"

"The King is Dead!" A messenger shouts from the top of the wall. "Long live the King!"

The gate opens, suddenly, and Dean rides through, sitting tall in his saddle.

He looks every bit as pale and grim as Sam does.

* * *

 

"Glad to see you've finally given up that wild hair of yours," his father says by way of greeting him, and Dean nods.

He'd told Castiel, and all he knew suddenly was that he couldn't be there anymore. That if Castiel was going to heal and become his own person, he couldn't have what Dean had wanted him to be hanging over him. That he didn't need a knight or a protector, he needed room, he couldn't- god, there was so much Dean couldn't do for him why was he even there why was he even there in that castle, in that room, why-

So he packed a bedroll, filled a skin, grabbed tack from the kitchen, and rode out to the distant fort where his father was stationed

And now he's here, standing in front of him, feeling smaller than he's felt in almost a year and a half.

"Go to bed," he says. "There's a free cot in the hall. You'll have to wait for porridge in the morning."

"Yes m'lord," Dean answers, and he walks off toward the hall.

He sleeps uneasily, among the men.

The fort is in the shape of a barbarian hall of old, one long room and few tucked away in the back. The men eat and sleep and bathe and fuck all in this one hall and John, their king, he sleeps in private quarters, planning their movements for the next days following.

Dean's father is a man haunted, a man possessed by the spectre of something that killed his mother years ago. A beast that stalks the night with yellow eyes.

It could be worse- his obsessions could lead him to cull and destroy their country, could lead them to war, could lead him to exact cruel taxes. Instead, he is mostly absent, meaning Sam or Dean does most of the actual ruling of the country.  The absenteeism, it has its own risks- Dean's proof of that.

John has never looked at him quite the same way, since it happened.

Dean fills his days with riding and searching- with m'lords and orders and footprints and his father's obsessions, writing notes to his brother and resolutely trying not to think of Castiel.

His smell.

His voice.

His words.

His stars.

"You see that?" Dean says, one night, riding with Benny, a knight of his fathers, "You see that star?"

"Brother, what the hell is with you and the stars?" He says. "Can't spend a night in the woods with you without you saying something about those dang stars."

They all know he rode out to fetch Castiel and they all know that something went wrong, but none of them ask him about it. None of them talk about it.

They bury the problem, in the way of good soldiers and loyal sons.

"We're closing in," he says one night in his room, looking over a map.

"M'lord?" Dean asks.

"This cave," John says. "You and I will ride there at first dawn. The silver arrows, we'll take those and we'll take it, once and for all."

"Yes, m'lord," Dean answers. It's easiest to agree with him then ask how he knows that silver arrows are what will kill the beast that haunts his nightmares.

"You look just like her," he says. He does not look at Dean.

"M'lord?" Dean asks.

"Your mother, Dean, you look just like her," he replies, looking up from where he sits, gazing at the map.

"Yes, m'lord," Dean replies. "Thank you."

John stands now, a little taller than Dean and bulkier in his furs. Worn in his eyes and face. "I fear, sometimes, that I have failed her," he says. His voice is low. "I have failed her, through you and Sam. I worry I have not made you strong enough. To be a king, it is strength. It is- it is your power, Dean. I must be strong, when I have died, Dean. You must promise to be strong for our country."

His father's eyes are tired and serious.

Every line of his face is heavy. Every line of his body is tightly held.

"Yes, m'lord," Dean answers.

His father has been m'lord since his mother passed, when he was four.

They are the last words his father says to him.

He rides out to the cave without anyone, even Dean, before the sun rises.

When Dean finally gets to the cave, panicked and unarmed, breath fast in his lungs and in his horse’s, it is too late.

A broken neck.

Slippery rocks.

The sudden, frozen knowledge that Dean is king now settles over him as he rides back with the King John’s body draped over his own horse.


	25. Chapter 25

They send the body ahead with an honor guard, anxious to get it back to the palace for a funeral. For a burial.

Dean sits on the bed of the quarters of the hall for a long time, the terrible emptiness of it caught inside of him.

Face down, in the cold water of that place. Pale and bloated and hollow.

There is a knock on the door and the sound of a cleared throat, and then Benny steps into the quarters.

"Your highness," he greets.

"No," Dean says, hoarsely. "No."

"M'lord," he interrupts. "You need to ride for the capital and the men are anxious to get you there." His tone is serious. "You've got...you've got a lot to do, Dean."

Dean opens and closes his hands, looking at the floor.

A broken neck. No wounds. No fire.

A madman's death.

He shuts his eyes and takes a deep, deep breath.

"Okay," he says, standing.

He enters the hall from the separate room and the hall is suddenly loud with the noise of the men standing.

Some of them Dean knows, but most of them are unfamiliar to him. Would have been pulled into the enormous ranks of his father's hunting party, guards, and knights while he was in capture and while he was pulling himself past the demons of his own mind.

He is a stranger to them, and suddenly he is their king.

There is no crown for him to wear- when John used the symbol he wore a crown of branches woven from the trees of the kingswood- but it is damn difficult not to stumble suddenly on the terrible weight that settles over him.

He is a stranger, he is their, king, he is their alpha.

"Kings are the alphas of a nation," his father told him, when he was younger.

They stood from the walls and looked out at the city. At the country below.  
"I thank god you were made alpha," he had said. "I pray similarly for your brother."

The wind had been cold. The stars had seemed so far, frozen. Distant.

"One day, Dean, you will be alpha to a pack of thousands. Thousands you may never meet. This pack is your duty Dean. This kingdom is your duty."His father had been so much taller than him then. "Do not disappoint me, boy."

"We ride," Dean says, as calmly as he can muster, "one hour. Bring everything. This hall was the king's death. It dies with him."

There is no susurration, no murmur, no whisper. The silence of agreement.

It is tight like a drawn cord.

Dean walks to the other end of the hall, through the door.

He saddles his horse.

He leads the party back to the castle.

They ride without words, and Dean rides with his sword pulled close to him.

It is a day's hard riding back to the castle, and it is nearly dusk when the arrive. The gate is raised.

The body arrived long ago.

Dean rides through and in the yard stands Sam, pale and scared, looking more like his younger brother than he has since long before Dean was taken so long ago and-

And Castiel, who looks so different he is almost a stranger.

When Dean had arrived at the palace where he lived, he had not been sure what to expect. He had known the empire that Castiel is heir to was huge, that it was wealthy, that it would support a beautiful city built in marble and glass. He hadn't expected the cool gold in his living quarters, or the size of them. He hadn't expected the jewels set into the fixtures of the doors- he just didn't know. He didn't anticipate the silk that made Castiel's clothes, more silk in his bedding and bedclothes than in the entire castle Dean lives in.

He didn't expect his starvation.

He'd received a portrait, long ago. Castiel standing tall in a field, in the formal dress of his court. His dark, shining hair, his pale skin, the slim shape of him.

When he'd gotten him, his skin had been pale but not in any kind of real, natural way. Sallowed from wasting. Not slim, bony. Dull, not shining.

This Castiel doesn't look like the portrait either.

Muscle has filled him out, into a lean, tough body. His hair is dark and it sits messily, thickly  on his head. His skin isn't pale at all, rather, it's tanned to a color like the fur on a deer foal.

His blue eyes are sharper, clearer, and more intense than Dean had remembered.

Castiel looks at him, for a long moment. Time freezes, and Dean feels caught inside of his consideration, his calculations.

Castiel kneels suddenly.

* * *

The mud of the yard is wet under the knee of his pants, but he can ignore that.

He looks down at the earth.

He is in the presence of a king here. The king of this country.

Castiel may be heir to an empire, but here, to these people, he is an outsider, a weak one at that. He is not even a consort- a little less than a guest, a little more than a friend of the king.

Now, Castiel knows, is the time for politics.

He will be respectful. He will be gracious. He will be subordinate to the rule of a stronger king.

"Rise," Dean says. Calmly.

And Dean, he will be the kinder king. The better ruler.

The alpha of a better pack.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you guys so much for all of your kind comments and the kudos! I know I'm dreadful about answering them but they are so kind and fantastic! Thank you!


	26. Chapter 26

They lay the dead king on a pyre, with furs and flowers- more colors than Castiel has seen since he left the palace. They lay the body with gems and gold and then they wrap it tight in a white linen shroud.

As soon as the sun goes down, Dean approaches the pyre with a torch. He kneels. He lights it.

The lesser citizens bleed back toward the city and then the lower knights and then the honor guard and finally it's just the three of them there, Dean, Sam and Castiel watching the slow fire consuming the wood of the pyre and the body as well.

There is a crown woven of branches settled on Dean's brow. It is uneven and rough, and it leaves red starpoints of blood along his forehead.

Castiel remembers distantly the funeral of his own parents, although his own customs were different. His people are returned to the earth.

He remembers his uncle standing before the grave. He remembers him telling them all that his father was a good king, noble and just. He remembers him saying his mother was a beautiful woman, fine and strong. A shame that the illness took her and the baby both.

Castiel had been six.

"Your father," Castiel asks softly, "was he a good king?"

There is a weighty, heavy pause before Dean says, "Our mother died in a fire when we were young. I was four. Sam was just a baby. John did not...he did not take her death well. Saw monsters in the shadows where there were none, enemies in his brothers. He expected...he expected much from Sam and I." His voice is heavy. "All I can do is hope to be the man he thought I might be."

It is an artful evasion, Castiel knows.

Sam says nothing.

"Why did you kneel?" Dean asks. "In the yard?"

"You are the king now," Castiel says. "I am a foreign prince. It was respectful." He pauses a moment. "You acknowledging it, you...you embracing it and telling me to stand, that made you...that made you  _regal_."

Dean doesn't say anything for a long moment, almost contemplative. "They do things differently in your country, don't they?"

"This is politics, Dean," Castiel says. "This is kingship."

Silence settles between them.

When Dean turns to walk away, Castiel says to watch it burn lower and lower and lower until he must walk back to the castle in the dark.

* * *

When Dean comes back to the castle, no one says anything to him. No one even looks at him, they still as he passes by them to the-

To the king's quarters, where he will sleep until the end of his own days.

He steps inside, and the room is pungent with the smell of his father. His furs and clothes were all burned with him but the smell of him seems to be rubbed into the walls. Permanent. He wonders if the smell will stay forever or if it will bleed away, like the smell of his mother did after her own death.

He pulls the crown of branches from his head and sits, shaking, on his bed.

There is a knock on his door before it suddenly opens and a red haired head pops inside.

"Hey," Charlie says. "How you doing?"

"What do I do?" He asks, and his voice sounds so much more quiet than he means it to.

Dean found Charlie in the streets of the city, an omega in distress. He had pulled her onto his horse and ridden to the castle before he said a word to her, brought her to Sam, something in the scent of her distress pulling a terrible fear out of him, something elemental and terrible. They'd become friends, though, once Dean calmed down and Charlie realized that he wasn't going to...he wouldn't try anything. She works in the kitchens now.

She comes into the room like nothing has changed, and it is all Dean wants.

She shuts the door behind herself and sits on the bed.

Dean holds her, suddenly.

The smell of her is the smell of the kitchens, of butter and lard and sugar. The papery smell of  _her_ is shot underneath though, and while it is comforting, the warm omega smell like home, it is not quite right. It is not quite what he wants or needs, but it is the comfort he has.

"Charlie, what will I do?" He says, softly.

"You'll do what you always do," Charlie says, "you'll heal. You'll adapt. And you'll be strong."

He exhales. "I don't think I  _can_ be," he murmurs.

"You're not alone," she says. "There's Sam and there's the prince you brought back from the-"

"I can't do that," Dean says. "I can't ask him- I can't-"

The door opens again, suddenly, and Castiel stands there, looking at both of them.

He looks absolutely stricken for a moment, pale and terrified and then he looks ashamed.

"I'm- I'm sorry," he says, turning and walking away.

"No!" Dean cries out. He  _needs_ him, as much as he hates it, as much as it's not fair to Castiel, to the person he actually  _is_ , Dean needs him. "No, Cas, please, this isn't-"  
"No, I understand, you need, you need heirs and she's, she's quite-"

Charlie and Dean both stand suddenly and Dean walks to Castiel and reaches out for him. "No, please," he says. "It's not like that, Cas, I thought you didn't..."

"You left me here," Castiel says suddenly. "Alone. You told me so many things and you didn't think what I would- and then you left- you decided- you decided-" And he is crying, Castiel is crying and his hands are drawing away from Dean he is retreating through space to the back wall of the hall. And he inhales, composing himself, and says with a voice that is cracked with tears, "I am sorry- I am sorry for your loss. I am- I know it is difficult. Heavy. You aren't alone."

He gestures into the bedroom. "I guess you never were," he laughs, bitterly and then slinks off, quickly.

"No, Cas," Dean shouts. "Castiel, please."

He stops.

"Please," Dean says. "She's just a friend. An old friend. She's not a fiancee, she doesn't even- she'd never want me, Cas, and I'd never- "

  
_I'd never want anyone other than you_ , he thinks, and he knows deep to the bones of himself that it's true. 

"Please," he says.  

 

 


	27. Chapter 27

Castiel smells the heavy alpha scent of the room. The threat of it is clear to him, like a knife across his throat.

Dean though, Dean stands there with his sad eyes and his breaking voice and the particular sadness of him.

The word between them rings.

_Please._

Castiel closes his eyes and inhales, long and slow.

He catches Dean's smell amidst that strong, raw smell of alpha.

He steps forward into the room.

Dean's eyes are red and glassy. His body looks heavy and exhausted. He looks like he's falling apart.

"How did it happen?" Castiel asks, softly.

"Broke his neck," Dean answers. "He rode into a cave, alone. Slipped on the rocks and died." He pauses, standing awkwardly, emptily before Castiel and says, "He'd been dead a long time, really. He was...he'd been gone since Mom died."

Castiel barely remembers his own parents.

"We missed you," Castiel says. "Sam and I."

Dean practically flinches.

"I'm sorry," he says.  He looks down, like a scolded child. "I know you didn't...you don't need me. You don't need-"

"I don't _need_ you?" Castiel practically roars. He's so angry again, absolutely furious. "You decided I don't need you and you- you _left_. You don't...you don't get to decide that I don't need you or that I don't-"

He realizes it before he says it but just barely.

He loves him.

"That you don't what?" Dean asks quietly.

"Dean," Castiel says. "You saved me. You literally...I thought you were going to force me to- to marry you." He doesn't say the thing he thought was the real threat. Doesn't dare. "You're- you're kind and smart and beautiful and strong. You take care of people, you're kind to those who are vulnerable or under you. You talk to me, you treat me like I'm _human_ and not some kind of smaller animal. Dean- Dean you told me you might have been able to love me and then you _left_. You just- you just _left_."

Castiel hugs himself, wraps his arms around his torso and just stands there.

Dean steps forward and kneels. He reaches forward slightly, just barely, and grabs Castiel's legs. He leans forward, as if begging for something. Forgiveness. Benediction.

God, he looks so small like this.

"I don't want to," Dean says. "I don't want to be the king. I don't want to- I don't want to do this. I'm so scared, I'm going to do it all wrong and there's so many of them." He pauses, and there is a twist of a knife in that pause. "I'm going to let them all down."

Castiel moves slightly, delicately, and awkwardly reaches out to run his fingers through Dean's short hair. It bristles against his fingers. Rough.

"I'm sorry," he says gently. "I'm sorry I left. I was so scared, Cas, I was so scared that you'd- I knew you wouldn't want me."

"Dean," Castiel says. "You have to let me make my own decisions." He almost laughs as he says it. "You did so well for a while there."

He winds his fingers through Dean's hair, scratches his scalp. Dean looks up at him, his green eyes teary and bloodshot.

Castiel lets his fingers drift over Dean's cheekbones, softly.

He wants him, so badly.

"Cas," he says softly.

Castiel pulls Dean up from the floor gingerly and Dean holds his shoulders.

He looks at Castiel. In the low firelight of the room, he glows like a small sun.

Castiel stands on the tops of his toes to lean up and forward and kisses Dean.

His mouth is warm and soft and he moans slightly as Castiel kisses him.

He pulls him in closer, arms pulling him in tight, tighter. Close and dear and total.

"Cas," he murmurs. "Cas, love you. Loved you so long, so beautiful, so _strong_ , Cas you're beautiful."

Castiel moves his hands under Dean's shirt, touching his warm skin and firm muscles.

" _Dean_ ," he says. It is the only word on his lips. The only word he can hold in his mouth.

"Dean, Dean, Dean," he says. He's suddenly pulling Dean's clothes, tugging at them, pulling them up and away from his shoulders and body, pulling them off of him.

Castiel has to touch Dean. This isn't even like when he was in heat and wanted to touch anyone and anything, this is just Dean. Just wants to touch him. All over. Everywhere.

Dean moves to nuzzle into Castiel's neck, smelling him- scenting him. He nips against the side of his neck, right near the artery and Castiel gasps.

"A-a-alpha," he stutters out. "Alpha, please."  
Dean growls, low and protective and serious. Possessive.

"Mate," he rumbles. "Breed you up."

And for the first time, Castiel _wants_ that. The thought of pups, of his body soft with a pregnancy doesn't revolt him. The thought of being mated, it doesn't leave him cold.

He wants Dean. He wants to be Dean's and he wants Dean to be his. He wants this. He wants this kingdom, he wants.

Dean pulls Castiel's own clothes off and gently moves them both to the bed.

He settles himself over Castiel, kissing his chest, against his torso where weeks ago his ribs showed through as vividly as fingers. Now they are ghosts, hidden under muscle and fat. His bellybutton no longer strives for his backbone and Dean bites and sucks and kisses and moans against Castiel, who squirms and rolls underneath him.

He comes to Castiel's trousers and unlaces them. He tugs them down and moans, loudly, in the room.

"Cas," he says. "Cas, Cas, you _smell,_ oh God, Cas, you smell- you smell like everything I could everything- you are everything, you are my-" he growls suddenly, "Cas, you are my everything."

Castiel reaches down and grabs Dean's close hair as best he can. He pushes Dean's face downward.

He knows what he wants.

Dean moves like a blind pup to the source of Castiel's slick, which has begun to leak out of him. He hitches Castiel's knees up to reach him better and slips his tongue into that space and Castiel sees for the first time, really _sees_ and feels _light_ , bright and warm and full of all reality for the first time in his life. It is like he has woken up, it is like entering into the sunlight.

"Alpha," he gasps. "Alpha, alpha, alpha, alpha."  
Dean growls, and the rumble of it burns through all of Castiel and he moans again.

When Dean looks up, his pupils are blown huge and wide. They are both panting, gasping, desperate for air.

"Cas," he says, and his voice is a wrecked sound. "Cas, I want to- can I- can we-"

"Dean," Castiel exhales. "Dean, _please_ , fuck me."

Dean sighs like he is relieved.

* * *

Castiel is tight and _hot_ around him. He presses slowly inside of him, Castiel moaning all the way through.

Dean feels. He feels more than he has ever felt in his life. He feels the press of every breath of air on his skin, he feels every strain of his muscle- it is like being born.  

They hold there for a few moments and then Castiel _grinds_ on him and Dean thrusts forward and then they're-

"Dean," Castiel cries, and the sound tears through Dean like the sound of the first birds in spring. "Dean, I'm-"

Dean reaches out and wraps his hand around Castiel's hard cock. He's well endowed, particularly for an omega, and Dean jacks him in long strokes, his thumb swiping over the head of his cock. Pre-come smears over the flesh. It's hard to concentrate on both jacking Castiel and fucking him, but suddenly Castiel clenches around him as he comes, the sensation pulling his voice away, jerked frozen and still by the sensation.

"Dean," he cries out, breathless, and Dean feels something swell and shift and then there is nothing.

There is nothing and there is everything.

* * *

Dean's knot swells inside of him and the sensation triggers something sleepy and safe and primal in Castiel. He sighs, happily and helps Dean settle over him. He will be knotted inside of Castiel for a while but he doesn't mind. He feels warm.

He pets Dean's hair and falls asleep.

* * *

_Warm. Soft. Safe. Warm. Mate. Pack. Safe._

_Cave. Den._

_Home._

_Safe._

 

 


	28. Chapter 28

When Dean wakes up, Castiel is watching him with his bright blue eyes, ringed and wrinkled and _tired_.

"Hello, Dean," he says softly.

Dean reaches toward him and touches his face softly, the skin that holds above his cheekbone, soft. Castiel closes his eyes slowly, like a long blink. His eyelashes float softly over his skin. Beautiful.

"You look tired," Dean murmurs.

Castiel smiles slightly. "I don't sleep as well as I used to," he answers. "Better, with you, but still...still hard." He opens his eyes again, so bright, like the last ends of a hot fire. "Castles are so different from palaces. So alive, all of the time. They sing."

Dean's hand drifts a little, downward to Castiel's hips. "Too loud for you?" He asks.

Castiel huffs a small laugh- tiny. "It's not bad," he says. He wiggles, closer to Dean's chest, and inhales. "What are we...now?" he asks. "Are we-am I your-"

"I'd like to marry you," Dean answers, and it's the truth. "If- if you'd have me, Cas, I'd like to be yours for the rest of our lives."

Castiel smiles a little broader, his teeth just barely showing. "Yes," he says, softly. "I think I'd like that."

Dean smiles back at him. Crooks his head downward and smells him. The smell of horse is still on his hair and scalp. There's is also the smell of _him,_ though, underneath. The air and water smell of rain, the clean and sweet smell of new flowers, the mineral smell of soil. So dear.

"You have a lot to do," Castiel mutters. "Your brother, he's been working while you and your father were away. There's so much he's wanted to tell you."

"Cas," Dean says, "Cas, I don't think I _want_ to be king."

Castiel doesn't say anything for a few long moments and then says, "That's why you do it so well. You and Sam, you treat them like people. You treat everyone like people. It commands respect."

Dean kisses the top of Castiel's head.  "You're good at this," he says.

"I was trained to lead an empire," he says. "For a while, at least."

An empire, Dean remembers. An empire that granted him the wild territories to the west with their engagement.

"Did they ever teach you how to wield a sword?" Dean asks.

"They taught me to fence," he answers. "But nothing...useful. A different kind of dancing, more than anything. My people, our kings and emperors have not had to be warriors for many years. I was taught a different kind of diplomacy."

Dean feels himself flush red. "I wouldn't call myself a warrior," he murmurs.

Castiel huffs a small laugh against his chest. "Dean," he chides, mildly. "You ride a _destrier_. Your brother gave me one to ride myself."

Dean laughs in response.

"You should teach me," Castiel answers. "To handle a sword and shield. If I'm going to follow you, I should know."

"Follow me?" he asks.

Castiel nods.

* * *

Castiel has a crown forged for Dean.

It is not gold or silver, it is not set with gems. Castiel has seen such things. He has worn them. He knows that they are not the symbol Dean's people would respect. They are not a symbol _Dean_ would respect.

It is forged of steel polished to shine brightly. It is engraved with heavy knots, reminiscent of the woven branches of the summer crowns his father wore.

It shines above his brow, in the low light of the hall.

His knights bristle at the tables, but no one says anything. Castiel sits among them, not on the high table.

"When?" Dean had asked him.

"Soon," Castiel had replied. "You must be the king. And I must be more than a weak consort to give you heirs."

"Long live the king!" one of the knights calls from the back of the hall.

The cry is repeated, loudly. The sound of it rings.

Sam stands beside Castiel in heavy chain mail. Sam is important, a prince, a knight, but he is not the _king_. This is Dean's moment. Singular. Spectacular.

Dean holds his hand upward, a signal to silence.

It has been nearly four months since the death of the King John but they can just now coronate Dean.

He stands tall. Only Castiel can see the way Dean's face has barely paled, the fine sheen of sweat on his face. He is so _nervous_. He looks incredible, though.

"My father," he says, in a loud, clear voice, "was a proud man. A hard man. A strong man. My father was a man made from iron. He asked much of you, much that it was not fair to ask. His mourning, it should not have been made your mourning, not for so long he asked you. His mourning, it did little for our nation."

He pauses.

This is important. This is difficult.

"My Father's mourning did little for the good of our _pack_ ," he says.

In the hall, gathered like this in torchlight, they _are_ a pack. Tightly gathered together, the heady smell of alphas and horses and meat and _fire_. This is primal, elemental, and real.

"To be a king is to be alpha of a pack of thousands," Dean continues. "And our pack freezes and toils and starves."

The winters here, they are hard and cold. The farm land, it does not yield much. Children are gifts, preciously made and easily lost, if not stolen by neighbors or bandits by the hands of fever.

Castiel has learned much in this hard, cold land of tall trees and summers full of frost.

Dean, he thinks, may have learned even more.

"There is much, here and beyond our borders, that must be changed," he says. "I have seen the Imperial capital. I have seen the cities made of glass and marble, I have seen their cathedrals and their libraries. I have seen what they have made while our winters bleed our larders dry."

Castiel closes his eyes. He helped Dean with this part. This is part of the plan.

"I have seen where they grow soft," he says. "And I have seen us and I have seen our neighbors."

He pauses once more and Castiel opens his eyes and looks at Dean.

Dean looks at him for the barest second, a flash of green his way. Castiel nods.

"I have seen us grow hard," he continues. "I will ask much of you. But I will ask much of you in the name of our kingdom. In the name of our homestead, our walls, our larders. I say that the Empire has taken much and given us little. And I say that it is time for us to take."

There is sudden silence. Sudden murmuring. Sudden applause, like thunder. Sudden shouting.

Sudden cry.

Castiel closes his eyes and sighs, relieved.

"You think this will work?" Sam asks, quietly.  
"Yes," he answers. "This was the hard part. If he can take them this far...if he can take them this far, he can take them to war."

They have waited for war, for so long, these knights made by the King John.

Castiel watches Dean stand before them like a blade on the air. Sharp and tall and _strong_.

He looks at Castiel.

"We could take the empire," Castiel had said, Dean's hands warm against his back. "The army and cavalry haven't been big enough to take anything serious in _years_. Most of the power, it's not even there any more, it's just a memory."

Dean had gasped against Castiel's neck, biting, kissing, huffing.

"Memories," Castiel had said, "can be forgotten."

"Cas," Dean had said, "Cas, I don't want a _kingdom_ , much less an entire empire."

His breath had been sweet. The smell of him had been all sweat and musk and _alphaalphaalpha_.

A day in the yard. A night in the bed. That had been their schedule.

Castiel had pulled Dean's face from his neck and looked at him, long. Hard.

"Dean," he'd said, "you and I, we take the old empire, and we reforge it in your name."

He'd kissed Dean, his mouth, his forehead, his body.

"We kill my uncle," he had said, "we take the empire back under my name as rightful heir, we break the memory there."

Dean had stopped and looked up at Castiel with his green, green eyes. His open face with freckles and green eyes and a sweetness, a softness, a kind of innocence. "We break the empire," Dean had whispered. "We break _your_ empire."

"We break my empire," Castiel had answered, "and we build your kingdom on her ruins."

Now, Dean stands among his knights, rallying for war.

Now, Castiel stands as a knight himself. A foreigner, an outsider, the king's favorite, an _omega._ A man gathering a reputation for bloodthirst they had never seen.

The alpha of their country.

The omega of their country.

"This is going to work," Castiel murmurs.

Their engagement is an open secret.

Hemarries Dean in two weeks.

 

 


	29. Chapter 29

He finds him in the library, behind a bookcase, cowering.

He used to stand so much taller over him, his uncle.

Castiel's sword was forged special for him, made hot on a fire and hammered and polished to something shining and hard and _sharp_. Now, it is streaked red.

He tells them, every time they approach him, that he does not want to do this. That if they lay down their swords, he would gladly let them live. Let them serve the new kingdom that shall be built here- united and strong.

They never listen to him, though, and Castiel is quickly becoming accustomed to killing and maiming. There were many guards in this city, and now, unfortunately, many corpses. 

Castiel has already talked to Dean about what the new kingdom shall do for the widows and children- the return of their husbands' armor and the payment of a small pension. There is gold enough in their vaults to support it, even after they repair what their army has done to the walls. 

"Hello, Uncle," he greets.

He is pale and fat, and he shakes in his silk clothes.

"Castiel," he says, his voice _soft_ in that way that makes Castiel's skin crawl. "Castiel-you've come back- you've come back to us-"

"No," Castiel interrupts. He's come back, but not _to_ anyone. He has _brought_.

"What do you mean 'no,' you insolent-" His uncle begins but then he stops.

A look comes over his face, as if he has realized what has happened here. How the invaders could have known the layout of the city and the palace, the exact armaments of the guards, the fires here and there out in the edges of the empire.

"Call them off," he says. "Call them off, Castiel-"

"No," he says.

"They'll _kill you_ ," he hisses. "You'll be lucky if that's _all_ they do."

"No," Castiel answers, stepping forward.

His uncle sneers, and the expression looks more correct than anything else Castiel has seen on his face in this curious reunion. In this library that Castiel spent so much of his childhood in, in this palace that was his home once, before this man that _sold_ him.

"No," Castiel says. "They would not kill the man who will legitimate the conquest of the largest empire on the continent."

"You traitorous-"

"You _sold_ me, Uncle," Castiel says, and he realizes his voice is as low as his uncle's is thundering. "You sold me to strangers to take it for yourself. What did you expect me to do?"

He pulls his sword forward. His uncle is unarmed. The fabric of his clothes strain against the point of Castiel's sword.

"Did you expect me to die before or _after_ the childbirth? Maybe on the ride there? As long as it was after the marriage and I was far, far away, yes?"

Castiel pushes forward, just barely. Red blooms under the point of his sword slowly, the way a flower opens. His uncle gasps out.

"Be- be reasonable, Castiel-"

"Reasonable?" Castiel asks. "By the laws of the old empire and by the laws of my _people_ , I am well within the right. The execution of those looking to steal a throne from the rightful king is an old rite."

"You would not rule," he growls.

"I will more than you ever shall, Uncle," Castiel whispers, and he plunges the sword forward.

His uncle dies gurgling, twitching. He shits and pisses himself. He drools. His eyes are empty like a fish's. He looks pale, jaundiced and weak.

"Cas?" Dean calls, storming into the library, and Castiel falls on him as he enters.

His hand stings from gripping his sword.

"I'm tired," he murmurs into Dean's shirt.

"I know, Angel," Dean answers softly. "But we're done now. It's happened- it's done. It's done."

Castiel embraces him for a long minute and then he hears people at the door and pulls away.

They stand before each other- this is the important part.

Dean, the conqueror.

Castiel, the conquered.

There are guards and nobles of the old empire in the room with him. Witnesses.

Castiel kneels.

"My lord," he says, loudly. Clearly. "Your highness."

Dean takes his sword and slowly taps Castiel's two shoulders and the crown of his head.

And that simply, it is done.

"Long live the King!" the guards cry.

There is a shocked aghast silence.

"Long live the King!" Castiel shouts, still kneeling, head still bowed.

More silence, and then loudly, clearly, "Long live the King!"

The empire has died.

His uncle has died.

And Castiel will never be sold again.

They will be wed in the morning.


	30. Chapter 30

Sam rules well, as they all thought he might. He's knowledgeable. He's kind. He has a presence of _listening_ in a moment that makes him popular with the knights and nearby lords.

The empire is split back into provinces. The local kings and lords are returned their castles, their knights. Vows of allegiance, they are sworn in Dean's name.

And Castiel, he stands behind him by half a step in chainmail and buckler, with a silver circlet across his brow to mark him as more than the captain of his guard.

His uncle's head- Zachariah's head- is placed on a pike at the city walls. His body is cut into chunks, to be fed to dogs. His name is torn from the family trees. His portraits burned.

Instead of his reign and his memory, Castiel is returned from exile with a powerful Alpha to rule the new kingdom. Returned as the breaker of empire. Returned as an emancipator.

And Dean, he stands for the portraits and the currency and he smiles from the balcony, he poses for a single statue to be placed in the square of his homeland. He's tall and strong and thoughtful. He speaks deliberately, carefully, and always defers to Castiel's judgement.

It is an open secret in court, the real power behind the throne. It is also an open secret that the blood on their swords is barely dry.

Dean made him a conqueror. Dean made him a killer of men, a wielder of the sword, a beast of iron and steel, a _ruler_.

Castiel settles his hand over his stomach, absently.

Castiel will make Dean a father.

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was supposed to be one thousand five hundred words long as a celebration of having fifteen hundred followers. And then this happened. This whole mess of a thing. Ya'll's comments and kudos have meant the world to me. It's been a ride.


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